


Family is forged one step at a time

by CenturionsofRome



Series: Chosen of the Bijuu [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Naruto finds Kurama before Madara, Not all relationships need romance, Platonic Relationships, Pre-Jinchuuriki Kurama, Time Travel, old Naruto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-03-26 12:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 45,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19006099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CenturionsofRome/pseuds/CenturionsofRome
Summary: In one timeline, Madara hunted down and enslaved the Kyuubi no Kitsune to his will and wielded him against Hashirama. Two hundred years later, Naruto squares off against a man who seeks to turn back time to claim the Juubi. He wins in the sense that the man dies. He looses in that he himself is cast back in time instead, and without Kurama.In this timeline, two now seek the Bijuu, one young, powerful, and driven by hatred; the other beyond ancient, inherently kind, and only seeks to save his oldest friend in the little time he has left, even if said friend no longer remembers him.A one-shot that became something more. Series complete.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here is the map I'm using, for those wondering:
> 
> https://www.deviantart.com/mcskeleton/art/Naruto-World-Map-532687636

Kurama scowled as he strode through the ancient redwood forest that he had claimed as his, drawn by the chakra flares of a human, deliberately fired off in an attempt to draw attention. No doubt here in yet another attempt to claim his power or bend him to the human’s will. Humans would never learn. He and his siblings would never bow to such petty and cruel beings, any being really, but especially humans.

They are the Bijuu.

They are gods.

No human had ever approached him with any intent other than what they could take from the Bijuu.

Another flare, the human is close.

Kurama gathers his chakra in preparation – he does love to see the terror of such arrogant humans before he kills them – and steps though the massive trees. And stops.

In the center of a large clearing a small campfire burns, casting shadows in the twilight of the forest. Facing him across the campfire is an elderly human dressed in dirty off-white robes, hair bleached white with age, once strong frame withered by the passage of years, seated in the lotus position.

The scene is achingly familiar, the only thing missing is his siblings. How many nights had he and the other Bijuu listened to his father while he sat in front of a fire in that exact pose? It is one of the curses of being a Bijuu. He cannot forget. He can push memories away, bury them so deeply that it can take him a while to recall, but he cannot forget. The passage of time will never dull his memories, or the emotions attached.

But this man is not Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo. He is not his father, dead for going on two millennia. As Kurama reminds himself of this, the man looks up and meets his bloody gaze with shockingly azure orbs. There is no fear. No dread, no terror. No anger, hate, or lust for power ether. Instead the man’s mouth curves up in a gentle smile, an act that the wrinkles say is long familiar.

“Hello, Kurama.”

The man’s voice is kind, his face peaceful, scent of hidden joy. Joy that had not been there until Kurama had stepped between the trees. Joy at seeing him. None had ever been happy at seeing him since the Sage died, not even his own siblings. Yet this elderly human brings memories long suppressed to the surface and feelings Kurama thought he had excised centuries ago.

“Would you like a seat?”

With the memories of the Sage in the forefront of his mind, Kurama settles down across from him without thinking. Surfacing from his memories, Kurama realized that the man is still watching him. He is a human, Kurama reminds himself, bringing forth the memories of every betrayal, every attack, every hateful curse that humans have inflicted on him.

 **“I can kill you,”** Kurama growls, **“It wouldn’t even be hard. You’re too old to run. Too old to fight. I can crush you with a single paw. A negligent swipe of a tail. I can incinerate you with fire, flay you with wind, vaporize you with a bijuudama.”**

“But you won’t.”

The human is completely certain of that. There wasn’t a single flicker of fear from him, still gazing at Kurama with content acceptance. It infuriates Kurama. Shoving himself to his paws so violently it craters the ground he saturates the area with his chakra, filling the glade with his malice, he looms over the ancient human and snarls

**“I am the Kyuubi no Kitsune! I am the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox! I destroy villages, devour towns! I stalk the nightmares of the most powerful humans in the world! Entire nations tremble before me!”**

But instead of fear, disgust or anger, sadness flickers across the man’s face instead. Kurama is grudgingly impressed that the man hasn’t even twitched at his overpowering chakra.

“Neither of those is your name.”

**“They are the names that I have earned.”**

“True, yet they are not you. Ōtsutsuki Kurama.”

Kurama is shocked silent. He’s given his name a few times over the centuries, obviously someone would have written it down somewhere, but his father’s clan…. The only ones who knew that the Sage had made the Bijuu were Indra and Asura, and Kurama was certain that they had taken the secret to their graves.

**“…How do you know that name?”**

The human’s gentle smile twists with grief and loss.

“From a friend who had been with me all my life, in a future that once was, yet now will never be.”

Kurama is no fool. He may not know who this friend is, though he’s really curious, but that sentence…. Seer, or time travel. He immediately rejects both, yet they’re the only valid answers.

**“Prove it.”**

The man sighs.

“I’m not particularly good at ninshuu. Too much has been lost over the centuries. But a Memory Transfer Jutsu? That I can do.”

He holds out his age worn hand to Kurama. Kurama hesitates, staring at it like a fox would a venomous snake. The man chuckles

“What are you waiting for? As you said, I’m too old to be a threat to you.”

Slowly, hesitantly, Kurama touches a single digit to the outstretched hand.

And he _sees_.

* * *

When the Jutsu finally ends he once more gazes on the ancient visage of Uzumaki Naruto, a man who has buried friends, his wife, and his children, most lost to old age, alone save for his grandkids, themselves grandparents, and a single companion bound to him since birth, jailor turned soul-forged friend, and through that companion, the other eight Bijuu.

Thrown into the distant past, almost a century before his birth, by preventing a power-hungry fool from traveling back in time in an attempt to claim the Juubi, yet unable to get clear of the seal himself.

It’s all too much, far too much, and Kurama turns and flees into the night, ignoring the pain his departure leaves in Naruto. He also ignores the way his metaphysical heart also squeezes in his chest.

* * *

Two days later Kurama is lying on the ground somewhere deep in the forest – he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going when he left (not fled, the Kyuubi no Kitsune never flees) – eyes closed as he sorts and re-watches the memories that Naruto gave him, when something starts to pet his left forepaw.

Snapping his eyes open he is surprised to see Naruto sitting next his paw on a small log that wasn’t there before, back to his face, gently petting his fur.

“Rage and hate are so much easier to understand than pain, loss, and rejection,” Naruto says, a tremor carefully hidden in his voice.

Kurama suppresses a full body flinch. Naruto had laid his soul bare for Kurama, and Kurama had left. Kurama doesn’t want to care about this human, any human really. But. He cannot forget Naruto’s memories, cannot forget the camaraderie and companionship between Naruto and the future version of himself. It makes him feel two things that he had long thought that he would never feel again, _loneliness_ and _longing_.

He oh so desperately _wants_ what his future self had, and now he’s keenly aware of just how _alone_ he is. Alone for centuries. Millennia. He wants to rage at Naruto for making him feel this way, hate him for giving him his memories. But he knows that won’t drive Naruto away, not unless he kills him or breaks his spirit. Doing either would be so easy, Naruto his hanging by a thread, physically, mentally, spiritually. All his accomplishments have been undone, all sacrifices for naught. Using the memories Naruto gave him, Kurama can think of a dozen things to say that would make Naruto walk away, sit down somewhere, and just… stop holding on to life.

But Kurama is terrified that if he does so, it will be another thousand years before someone offers him their companionship, and he doesn’t want to be alone again. He knows from Naruto’s memories that he will never abandon Kurama so long as he still lives. Having someone so obviously love him unconditionally scares him, yet the prospect of loosing said love scares him far, far more. So the words die in the back of his throat unspoken and instead he just… watches. As the sun rolls across the sky the silence never becomes awkward or strained, Naruto is happy to give Kurama all the time in the world, a far cry from the Naruto of his early and teen years, along with much of his adult life, but now Naruto is old, older than even the Madara of his memories, and _tired_. He has plenty of memories to lose himself in. Finally Kurama speaks

**“Why me?”**

“Because you’re my friend,” is the instant response as Naruto turns to face him.

**“No, I mean… why me? Why not Zetsu, or Madara?”**

Naruto’s confusion clears with a look of understanding.

“Simply put, I’m too old. Too worn out. I mean, yeah before the time jump we could beat any two other Jinchuuriki, but without you teen me would flatten me now. _Jonin_ give me difficulty these days, there’s no way for me to fight either of them and survive, much less win. But you, you I can help.”

**“How?”**

There is a flicker of chakra and Naruto is holding a scroll which he then unrolls for Kurama to see.

**“That is a very complex seal.”**

Naruto nodded.

“It’s what we were giving the new Jinchuuriki. Stops control seals dead and is designed to provide resistance to the Sharingan, though it cannot block it completely. Lock is on the inside, keyed to each Bijuu, and the Bijuu cannot be forcibly extracted without first exhausting the chakra of both human and Bijuu. Also allows for the creation of an avatar outside the seal so you can interact with the world.”

**“You want me to bond with a human?”**

Thanks to Naruto’s memories the idea isn’t as revolting as it might have been, but Kurama still baulks. Naruto sighed, shoulders sagging.

“Uzushiogakure has already developed Jinchuuriki seals that can work on even you. You know this now. They just need an excuse and your location, and Madara is determined to provide both.”

**“Then I shall destroy them.”**

Naruto gives him a mildly incredulous look.

“You’ve seen the devastation a single Uzumaki can cause, do you honestly think you can stand against an entire clan?”

Kurama scowls.

**“They cannot stand against all of the Bijuu.”**

“Probably true,” Naruto admits, “But will your siblings believe and rally to you?”

**“…no.”**

Naruto nods, as though there was no other answer, and to those who know the Bijuu as well as he does, there isn’t. Silence dominates for a while, shadows of the trees beginning to cover the clearing.

**“I have no wish to bond with a human.”**

“You wish to be alone again?”

**“Yes.”**

It’s a lie, a blatant one.

“You think that Hagoromo wanted you to live alone, wallowing in your hate, blindly lashing out at the world?”

 _No_ , the answer instantly comes to Kurama, but he doesn’t voice it.

**“If he did not, why did he abandon us in the middle of nowhere, far from his followers?”**

“He ran out of time.”

**“…Explain.”**

“He wasn’t expecting Indra’s betrayal. Though I do not know for certain, I suspect that he was planning on handing off management of his clan to Asura so that he would have time to establish a support structure for you and your siblings. Indra took that from you.”

 **“We are the bijuu,”** Kurama growls, **“We do not need support, especially from fickle and petty creatures like humans.”**

He almost believes it.

“When the Sage made you and your siblings, he was limited only by what he knew, but what he knew was the human mind.”

It takes a few moments for Kurama to realize what Naruto is implying, but once he does he snarls

**“I am not human!”**

“No, you’re not, but the foundations of your mind, what everything else is built off of, is.”

Naruto gives him a kind look.

“And no mind is supposed to go without companionship for years, much less decades and centuries.”

Kurama lurched to his paws and stormed away.

* * *

Two weeks had passed, and no matter where Kurama went, Naruto was always there to offer his acceptance, kindness, and love. A part of Kurama was utterly infuriated that this human would not leave him alone, but Naruto’s presence and memories eased an ache in his heart that had been there since his father’s death.

Rather than press him about their previous conversations, Naruto instead talked about amusing incidents that had happened in a future-that-never-will-be. Befitting his age, there are a lot of them. Kurama also couldn’t forget the delight on Naruto’s face when he started making sarcastic commentary. It’s… nice. Even fun. Kurama had forgotten, actually forgotten, something he had thought was impossible, what fun and companionship felt like.

“-So Sasuke and I look at each other as though we’re not upside-down with the rest of the entire office before I say to Boruto ‘What do you mean? You’re the one on the ceiling.’” Naruto chuckles as he slowly goes through a kata, “The kid was so confused. And so was – urngh.”

Kurama looked at Naruto in alarm as his legs abruptly collapsed under him.

**“Naruto?”**

“I’m okay,” Naruto lied, pain lacing his voice.

**“No, you’re not.”**

Naruto dropped into Sage mode for a few seconds, something that he had been doing off an on throughout the week with increasing frequency before standing again and giving Kurama a strained smile.

“It’s okay, Kurama. I have time.”

A sliver of apprehension runs down Kurama’s spine.

**“Time for what?”**

“To find you a companion.”

**“You don’t already have one picked out?”**

“You weren’t ready.”

**“Naruto.”**

For the first time Naruto doesn’t meet his gaze.

**“Naruto, how much time.”**

“Two months… maybe three,” he admits in a quiet voice.

The apprehension deepens into dread.

**“What is wrong?”**

Naruto is silent for a long while before he speaks, his voice laced with sadness.

“From my conception to the time travel, we had been separated for only several hours at most, and my body has adapted to your chakra to the point where it needs it to keep functioning. I can emulate your chakra somewhat with senjutsu, but it’s not perfect, and my organs are slowly failing.”

He’s dying. The first person to offer Kurama love and acceptance since the Sage, and he’s dying from a lack of Bijuu chakra.

**“No.”**

Kurama doesn’t realize he’s spoken for a moment.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Naruto said quietly.

**“I refuse to accept that.”**

Kurama paused to consider the decision he’s impulsively jumped to, before realizing that it isn’t much of a decision at all.

**“Bring out the seal.”**

He refuses to be alone again, not now that he has a spark of hope.

Hope that also flickers across Naruto’s face before it fades, but he summons the scroll.

“It will only buy me a few years though.”

Kurama thinks for a moment.

**“Your memories say that my chakra has mutagenic effects in humans.”**

“It does.”

**“Are there limiters in the seal to prevent excess mutation?”**

“There are.”

**“…Break them.”**

* * *

Madara was so close to his goal that he had to refrain from grinning. Finally, he had finally tracked down the Kyuubi no Kitsune, and the beast would soon be his. He could have claimed any of the other Bijuu, some with far less work, granted, but why settle for something lesser when he could have the best?

Sunset was illuminating the Kyuubi’s Forest in the distance, one of several it had claimed over the years but the one it currently inhabited. By tomorrow, perhaps the day after, the beast will be his, and Konoha, Hashirama, will fall.

Rounding a bend in the road Madara paused as he noticed a contradiction sitting by a fire next to the road, obviously camping for the night. The man’s face said elderly, old in a way few ever reach, yet the vibrant shock of orange-red hair, the same color of the pelt of the fox curled up in the man’s lap, say youth.

“Hello there, traveler,” the man said, the fox in his lap eyeing him warily.

“Hello,” he responds warily, coming closer to the fire, though he doesn’t sit.

Madara continued to examine the strange man. His back was straight, his shoulders level, another thing at odds with his elderly face, confidence in his poise that clearly marks him as either a veteran shinobi or samurai. But the thing that startles Madara the most are the small black claws the man has instead of nails and that his blue eyes have a vertical pupil.

“What are you?” Madara breaths.

“Just an old man who wishes to see more of the world before he dies,” the man says lightly, before nodding to the Kyuubi’s Forest, “The redwoods in there are truly stunning to behold.”

“Is that so?”

Perhaps this man could help him.

“I’ve heard rumors that the Kyuubi no Kitsune lives in that forest. Are there any truth to those rumors?”

The man stared at him for quite a while. Madara feels as though he is under a microscope, though he shoves the feeling aside.

“I’m afraid you just missed him,” the man finally says.

What?

“The Kyuubi left the forest several days ago.”

…He’s not lying. FUCK.

Madara takes a deep breath to keep from snapping.

“Did you see which way it went?” he asks.

“North. It has been awhile since he has been in Lightning Country, you may wish to look there,” the man says.

Madara grits his teeth to keep from screaming. He _just came from there_.

“Thank you,” he snarls will ill grace before spinning on his heel and storming back the way he came.

* * *

“I know you don’t like this Hashirama, but we need to do something.”

“Madara has been after the Tailed-Beasts for years, he clearly hasn’t had any success.”

“Hasn’t had any…” Tobirama said in disbelief, “Have you been paying any attention to the reports crossing your desk? Numerous Beasts are missing! Their domains are abandoned! Madara clearly has decided that having one Tailed-Beast isn’t enough and is going around collecting them all. We have to do something.”

“The Jinchuuriki seals are ready,” Mito added, “If we can reach the Beasts before Madara we can seal them and use their power against him. There will be no shortage of volunteers.”

“Enough,” Hashirama said with finality, “We have had this conversation before. As I told you then, we will not go borrowing trouble…”

Something with an immense amount of chakra abruptly appeared to his senses, not far outside Konoha’s walls, followed by a second, then a third. A fifth. A _ninth_.

The three of them were already out the window and bounding towards the west gate, Tobirama calling for the alarm to be raised as they went. Hashirama wasn’t entirely sure what he was sensing was, but only Bijuu had chakra that immense. He couldn’t sense Madara, but it was possible that his chakra was being drowned out.

Slamming to a stop above the west gate he stared into forest. If the Bijuu were anywhere close to the stories about their size he should have been able to see them, yet their signatures were all clustered together on the path leading to the village, approaching at a walking pace. Odd.

“Stay here,” Hashirama ordered the shinobi manning the wall before bounding off it, Tobirama cursing and following, Mito right behind him.

Rounding a bend that shielded the road from sight of Konoha Hashirama slid to a stop in surprise. The chakra signatures belonged to nine humans, eight between the ages of six and twelve, and one adult with brilliant fox-red hair contrasting an elderly face and a red fox on his shoulder. The most surprising thing was the collection of animals with the group. There was the aforementioned fox, a cat, a tanuki, a monkey, a horse, an ox, a giant slug, a turtle, and a massive insect.

“Hello, Hokage-sama,” the man said cheerfully, “We have heard good things about Konoha and would like to move in. Can we?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one-shot has mutated! It's devouring my free time!

Uzumaki Mito watched as Namikaze Naruto slowly hobbled into the large conference room that the Village Council used leaning heavily on a large staff that he hadn’t had, or indeed needed, the day before, his fox walking along at his heels and eyeing all the humans in the room save for his companion with suspicion and hostility. Given the rumors that the animals Namikaze had brought with his group could talk, she suspected that it was a summon of some kind.

“Good morning,” Namikaze said as he carefully lowered himself into the only available chair, the fox subsequently jumping onto his lap so he could peer at them over the table.

Mito glanced around to gauge how the other councilors were reacting to his act as everyone politely returned his greetings. Tobirama was as expressionless as always, Hashirama had raised an eyebrow, Nara eyed him like a particularly troublesome puzzle, Yamanaka seemed apathetic, Fujioka Uchiha was as expressionless as Tobirama, and Sukano, the civilian representative, was politely curious.

“Namikaze,” Nara said slowly, “I do not believe that I have heard of your clan before.”

“That’s because there isn’t one,” Namikaze answered.

“Civilian born?”

“My father was.”

“And your mother?”

Namikaze was silent for a while.

“She was of Uzumaki descent,” he admitted.

Mito felt her eyebrows rise.

“Really?” she asked.

Namikaze nodded.

“Don’t bother looking for any records though. I doubt that any exist and, well, I’m well over a hundred.”

Eyes widened and eyebrows raised all around the table. If that was true, and Mito didn’t think he was lying, then that was almost certainly proof of Uzumaki heritage, and Uzushio would be more than happy to accept Namikaze’s bloodline into the village, descendant of a forgotten bastard or not.

 “Do you have any children?”

Grief clouded his face.

 “All gone. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren too.”

 Mito winced. Sensing his summoner’s pain, the fox leaned into Namikaze, gazing up at his face. Namikaze responded by meeting the fox’s gaze and cuddling him to his chest, gently stroking his hand down the fox’s spine.

“Just me and Kurama these days,” Namikaze said quietly, before giving a small smile, “Well, including the orphans we’ve picked up.”

Everyone gave a moment of silence, all thinking about missing friends and loved ones, taken too soon. Finally, Sukano spoke

 “You don’t look to be a hundred.”

 Namikaze gave him a wry look.

 “It’s the hair, isn’t it?”

 There were nods all around the room.

 “It is hard to take your age seriously when you have such vibrant hair,” Yamanaka admitted.

 Namikaze hummed.

 “There are ancient places in the world inhabited by immensely powerful beings. Their trust is difficult to gain and easy to lose, for they have been used, abused, and betrayed by humanity for so long that they automatically assume the worst of us, and sadly their preconceptions are proven right far, far more often than not. But for those who gain their favor,” Namikaze wiggled his clawed fingertips before running them through his hair, “the effects are obvious.”

 “That’s how you met your fox,” Mito realized.

 “That’s how I met _Kurama_ , yes.”

 Nara made a noise of satisfaction.

 “So he is a summons.”

 “Technically no, but in practice there is little difference.”

 “Are your children’s companions the same?” Tobirama asked.

 “They are.”

 “So young,” Hashirama marveled, “How did they earn such patronage so young?”

 Namikaze smiled.

 “You’d be surprised to know what some orphaned and ostracized children will do to make a friend. And more often than not, they are loyal for life.”

 Mito thought about it and, with a bit of effort, she could see the chain of thought involved there. She could see others working it out too. Tobirama broke the silence

 “You do realize that this is a Hidden Village? We cannot afford freeloaders, especially in light of the increasing tensions from other villages.”

 Namikaze’s expression went blank and the fox snarled at Tobirama, though he subsided with a gentle caress from his summoner.

 “Neither I nor my kits have signed on to Konoha’s shinobi corps,” he said, voice flat, “And while I am willing to train ninja, most of my attention for the next few years will be on training my kits so that they are not more of a danger to themselves and their allies than their enemies. Give me five years before you start to try and persuade them to sign on with Konoha.”

 Namikaze’s eyes narrowed dangerously and his voice took on a hard edge while also radiating a small amount of killing intend that none-the-less had everyone stiffening in their seats.

 “Persuade _only_. Through words, friendships, or money, I care not, but if one of my kits takes up arms for Konoha it will be because they _chose_ to, not because they were coerced, blackmailed, or otherwise forced. And before you try to subvert that, let me tell you three things.

“One: My kits are the only family I have left.

“Two: I became a shinobi at twelve.

“Three: My clan and the village I helped build are gone.

“ _I’m still here._ ”

There was a pause before Namikaze smoothly rose to his feet, cradling his fox with his left arm while he grabbed his staff with his right.

“Thank you for your time, Councilors, Hokage-sama. I’ll see myself out.”

With that Namikaze turned and strode out of the room, the fox shifting so that it could glare at them over his shoulder before the closing door cut off line of sight.

Mito let out a breath that she hadn’t realized that she was holding. As far as parting threats go, Namikaze’s actually got more intimidating the longer she thought about it. No matter how powerful, shinobi don’t survive for a hundred years without being both skilled and lucky, and if his descendants had been anywhere near his power and skill, the Namikazes would have been powerful enough to give pause to even the Uzumaki or the Senju, despite their small numbers. And yet they had been wiped out. While Mito acknowledged that it was possible that Namikaze had survived due to luck, or simply being somewhere else, she doubted it. He seemed far more likely to throw himself into the thickest fray the moment trouble came calling. And, as he pointed out, he was still alive despite that.

“He’s dangerous,” Nara pointed out unnecessarily.

“Obviously,” Hashirama commented before turning to his brother, “I want to reduce the on-call garrison by thirty percent within the next six months.”

“…Why?” Tobirama asked, giving Hashirama a suspicious look, along with everyone else.

“If Naruto-san comes to view Konoha as his home, do you really think that, Konoha shinobi or not, he wouldn’t fight to defend it?”

“You have a point,” Yamanaka said, “Also, I’m curious as to how much of his transformation has affected his thought processes.”

“Kits, he called them,” Nara noted, before looking at the others, “I think those of us with kids and grandkids of appropriate age should encourage them to start associating with the Namikaze kids.”

“Attempting to force things probably won’t work out well,” Tobirama warned.

“It’s a good suggestion though, if we want them to fight for Konoha, we have to prove that it is worthy of their Will of Fire,” Hashirama said, “Is there any other business that needs addressing? No? Then dismissed.”

* * *

Three days later Mito invited herself over to the rapidly-nearing-completion Namikaze compound, located near the village’s wall. Said compound was made from heavy stone, called up by jutsus from the bedrock, shaped into a rectangular building, with lots of large windows set into the walls and basic strengthening seals carved into them. The level of fortification clearly evident was both surprising and worrying. That and that a large chunk of the adjacent forest, which had been earmarked for a training ground, vanishing from the view of sensor nin was what had prompted her visit.

Striding up to the doors, which Mito noted was not particularly heavy or reinforced save for a single strengthening seal, she knocked. Then a few minutes later she knocked again. This time the door opened slightly and the eleven-year-old girl warily stuck her head out, a blue-gray cat perched with it’s hindpaws on her shoulders and forepaws on her head, also regarding her suspiciously with its mismatched gold and green eyes. 

“Who’re you?” the girl demanded rudely.

“Uzumaki Mito,” Mito said, refraining from snapping at the child, “I am here to see Namikaze Naruto.”

The girl peered at her as though she didn’t quite believe that before her gaze unfocused and one eye changed from brown to emerald with a vertical pupil and back again. Finally, she nodded, reluctantly and with ill grace.

“I’ll find Naruto-san,” she grumbled, before adding “Would you please come in?”

“Yes, thank you,” Mito said coldly, pushing open the door and stepping in.

The entrance hall of the Namikaze compound was both wide and tall, with a vaulted ceiling, and well lit from the many windows letting in sunlight. There were four rooms branching off from the hallway, two on each side, none with doors, while the end of the hall opened up into a courtyard that the girl vanished through. Her cat chose not to follow her, instead jumping off and landing at the door, watching Mito.

Mito eyed the cat warily, the way it was standing there, hackles half raised and tail slowly lashing from side to side, made her think that the cat was debating attacking her. After several minutes of staring at each other Namikaze strode in.

“Thank you, Matatabi, I can take it from here.”

The cat flicked its tail one last time and disappeared after its summoner.

“My apologies for the wait, Uzumaki-san, I was in the middle of a delicate seal that would have failed explosively had I abandoned it.”

Mito winced sympathetically.

“My apologies Namikaze-san, I hate it when that happens to me as well. Unfortunately, I’m here on Village business. If you have a place where we can talk privately?”

Namikaze nodded and gestured for Mito to follow, leading them into the open, and slightly cratered, dirt courtyard towards another section. As she did so she noticed how quiet it was, alarmingly so. Glancing around she noticed all of the children and the summons watching her from various doorways and windows with deep suspicion, tinged with fear for the younger kids and anger for the summons.

“Have I wronged your family Namikaze?” Mito asked quietly.

Namikaze hummed.

“It is well known amongst the spirit realms that you were the one to create the Jinchuuriki seal.”

Mito froze. Namikaze gave her an assessing look.

“Many are those who wonder what you will use that seal for, especially if you are denied the opportunity to enslave the Tailed Beasts.”

“How do you know about that?” she whispered.

“An Uzumaki mentioned it within hearing range of a summons, who subsequently spread the knowledge across the spirit realm in warning the moment he was dismissed.”

Pieces abruptly slotted into place.

“They think that I’d steal their summons away from them?”

She was shocked and more than a little offended that they would think that poorly of her.

“They do.”

“I would never!”

“Even if they have power comparable to the Bijuu?”

Mito refrained from asking if they do, as that question was the exact opposite of helpful in the current situation.

“Even then,” she affirmed.

Namikaze gives her a skeptical look.

“Why do you not trust me?”

“You do not come up with a seal designed to capture and enslave beings as powerful as the Bijuu without intending to use it. The entire spirit realm is moving to hide or protect itself from you and Uzushio.”

More pieces fell into place.

“That’s why the Tailed Beasts are missing?”

“Indeed,” Namikaze nodded, “I feel I should congratulate you. For the first time in two thousand years, the Bijuu have buried their animosity towards each other and have united, spurred by the threat of you, and the seal you invented.”

Mito felt faint with horror. The Tailed Beasts were banding together? Explicitly to counter _her_?

“Be thankful that I was there to persuade them that attacking Uzushio and Konoha to destroy all knowledge of that seal was not only futile, but would in fact ensure that the seal became widely known and used.”

Her legs wobbled and the only reason she didn’t fall was Namikaze grabbing her arm in an iron grip. She recovered quickly though and Namikaze released her. Mind occupied with trying to come up with a plan to defend Konoha against a combined attack from the Bijuu, she barely noticed as Namikaze led her through a heavily reinforced door into a workshop with a truly ridiculous number of strengthening seals applied to the walls and sat her down in a chair.

Eventually a large exhalation drags her attention back to the present and she looks over as Namikaze sets down a chakra enhanced glass etching tool, picking up a hollow glass orb covered in etched seals from its stand in the process. Holding it between his fingers, he frowned in concentration then, with a surge of chakra, a howling windstorm formed with the glass, eerie in its’ silence, emanating from and orbiting a single bright light blue spark of condensed wind chakra.

“That is impressive,” Mito noted.

He hummed.

“I call them elemental orbs. Been thinking about selling them at the market.”

He smirked at her.

“Think I could get a good price?”

She looked at him before glancing at the nearly two dozen already completed orbs on shelves above the workbench, with all of the elements represented.

“You won’t want for food, I can guarantee that much,” she said dryly, “But while I thank you about your warning about the Bijuu, I originally came here for a different reason.”

“Do tell,” he said, placing the orb back on its stand.

“There have been some concerns raised about the level of fortification of your compound, and well as that a large chunk of the adjacent training ground has disappeared from sensors.”

“Well the reinforced stone walls are because I don’t particularly want to replace a loadbearing wall every few weeks, which is what would happen if I built the compound in the traditional manner. Take a look at some of the craters in the courtyard if you don’t believe me. As for the training grounds, it’s so that we don’t give the village heart attacks every time we do some of the more… esoteric training that our bonds allow.”

“I think you underestimate Konoha, Namikaze-san.”

Namikaze looked amused.

“All right, I’ll show you. Come on.”

Mito followed him back out into the courtyard where he paused to address the children and their summons.

“I’m heading out for a bit. Don’t break a wall while I’m gone.”

A valid concern, Mito realized, studently noticing the cracks, dents, and small craters in the _thick seal reinforced stone walls_.

“We won’t tou-san,” the kids chorused, but Mito notices that Namikaze is looking at the summons rather than the kids.

“What?” the tanuki barked irritably.

“You know what you did, Shukaku. If you do it again, I’ll dye you pink and cover you with glitter.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” the tanuki snarled.

“Yes, yes he would,” the fox noted with malicious glee, “And I’d help him.”

“Behave, you two,” Namikaze ordered tiredly before continuing out of the compound and towards the training ground, Mito following behind him, hearing him mutter that the kids were more mature than their summons at times.

It takes a few minutes of walking, but Mito noticed the moment she crossed the barrier, a ripple of chakra washing over her skin. Taking a few more steps she calls

“So what’s this esoteric technique you mentioned?”

Namikaze turned around, smiled at her, and then Mito staggered as the most overwhelming chakra she’d ever felt flooded the area, so thick that it felt like she was trying to breath molasses and flavored with faint malice and hints of ancient rage. Looking back at Namikaze she saw him cloaked in crimson Yokai chakra, a spectral fox face overlaying his own and a bushy fox-like chakra tail slowly waving behind him, eyes crimson and a dozen whisker marks across his cheeks.

“This is just a resting state,” he said, and Mito noted that his teeth have become fangs, canines in particular nearly tripling in length, and that those aren’t whisker _marks_ , they’re actual whiskers.

“Now imagine what it would feel like if I start casting full power jutsus.”

Mito swallowed nervously, heart hammering like a woodpecker. She clears her throat so that she doesn’t squeak.

“In this case I think that erecting the barrier was quite foresighted, Namikaze-san.”

As quickly as the chakra appeared it vanishes, and Namikaze is back to his original appearance, though it may be her imagination or just that she’s actively looking for them, but the three faint whisker marks on each cheek seem more noticeable.

“Any other questions?” He asked 

Mito thought for a bit.

“Your summons is a kitsune, isn’t it.”

“Perhaps.”

It’s an obvious yes.

“Are the other summons also yokai?”

“If they wish to tell you, that is their business, Uzumaki-san.”

Mito figured that the answer is also a yes.

“How strong are your kids compared to you?”

“We all fall within the same power bracket.”

A pause as Mito thought.

“In that case I thank you for your time, but I need to talk to my husband.”

“Farewell, Uzumaki-san.”

Walking away from the training grounds Mito organized the information she’d gained in preparation for putting it into a report, two things stand out to her. First was that they needed to set up an evacuation plan for if the Tailed Beasts decided to attack Konoha, because there was no way that Mito could see any kind of victory against such a force. They needed to pin and disable a Bijuu to seal it into a Jinchuuriki, and she highly doubted that the other eight would let them do that uncontested.

Second was that convincing the Namikaze children to sign up for Konoha has just become an object of vital importance, but even more important was making sure that they never have any reason to turn their ire on the Village, as they had the potential to be a far worse threat than even Madara. Sure, the other clans would (rightly) claim favoritism, but given that even one of the kids would be more powerful and valuable than many minor shinobi clans, their loyalty, or at the very least their neutrality, needed to be secured by any means necessary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, Naruto is being at bit harsh on Mito, but he only has previous-timeline Kurama's memories to go off of, and even accounting for the obvious bias, they don't paint her in a particularly good light. Also, as Naruto points out, you don't accidentally create a seal capable of containing a Bijuu, especially Kurama. Just like you don't accidentally create a nuclear bomb.
> 
> As to why no one suspects that the Bijuu are in fact the "summons", well they're missing several key pieces of information. First, none of them have ever felt a Bijuu's chakra before. Second is that the Version One form that Naruto shows is completely new (in that timeline) and as such no-one knows that it is exclusive to Jinchuuriki/Chosen, though if Naruto had made a miniature bijuudama Mito would have gotten suspicious. Third is that the Bijuu are MOUNTAIN SIZED CREATURES, not something the size of a HOUSECAT.
> 
> Also, the Biju are primarily communicating with their chosen mentally via the bond rather than speaking. It'll be a few months before they feel secure enough in Konoha to talk in public.
> 
> For those wondering were clans such as the Hyuuga are, the haven't joined Konoha yet.


	3. Chapter 3

[Four years later]

“And now, I would like to introduce Inuzuka Adachi, Head of the Inuzuka clan, now of Konoha!”

As Hashirama bows to the Inuzuka clan head, who rises to return the bow, Kurama eyes the massive black and gray ninken sitting to the right and slightly behind the human.

 ** _Matatabi is going to be thrilled_ ,** he thinks to Naruto, who responds with a burst of amusement.

 ** _Maybe I can get them to tree her,_** he mused, getting great amusement, along with a bit of admonishment. He rolled his eyes at the latter.

According to Naruto’s memories, all of the major clans have shown up in Konoha now, though the Hyuugas have not yet started using the Caged Bird Seal, but the divisions between the Main and Branch lines are already in place. Having absolutely no interest in listening to the human’s acceptance speech he tuned it out, along with the domestic and economic reports, though he payed attention when the international situation came up.

“Iwa launched another probe of Suna, though they turned back without bloodshed upon encountering Suna’s reaction force. Kiri has started raiding the Land of Forests and Komo is massing forces on the border of Frost Country, there are reports of multiple skirmishes occurring, though both sides are avoiding major clashes so far,” Tobirama reported, “and finally, we have discovered another spy, this time from Suna. So that means that all of the major villages have at least one spy here. Watch him as usual?”

Hashirama nodded, prompting the dog-human to speak up

“Why aren’t we capturing them?”

“Because if we do, a new spy will be sent, which we might not catch. This way at least we’ll be able to keep track of them and let them learn what we want them to learn.”

Kurama turned out the conversation as once again Hashirama lamented at how none of the Kages were even entertaining a peace conference. Honestly, why couldn’t the oblivious human realize that he was the only one of the lot that wanted peace?

“Hashirama,” Naruto said gently, almost sadly, “While peace is a very laudable goal, it can only be achieved when all sides are willing to at least accept peace. When even just one side wants war, and cannot be dissuaded, then war is inevitable.”

Several memories flashed through Naruto’s mind, the attempted Suna coup that killed Garaa’s son and grandson, the collapse and abandonment of Kiri after the assassination of Chōjūrō, and the series of events that nearly started a fifth shinobi war, averted only by the complete destruction of Oto by the combined might of the Bijuu, which was also the catalyst for Naruto retiring from being Hokage.

“I cannot accept that, Naruto,” Hashirama replied, “for otherwise what is the point of my life’s work in ending this cycle of hatred?”

“Founding Konoha isn’t enough?” Naruto asked with a grin, “Then perhaps this will help: when you, Senju Hashirama, brought peace between the Uchiha and Senju clans, you ended a bloody feud that dates back to Indra and Asura, the sons of the Sage of the Six Paths.”

Kurama blinked and then looked at the idiot human in a new light, because that’s actually true. Sage, he had succeeded where even Kurama and his siblings had failed many times over hundreds of years before giving up.

“If I’ve done the impossible once,” Hashirama declared after a moment of stunned silence, “then I shall do it again, just you watch!”

Several hours later, Kurama was still reflecting on the meeting, and Hashirama in particular, when a half-grown ninken went charging down a side street, barking its’ head off, only to shriek once out of sight and re-appear sprinting back the way it came, yipping in terror with Matatabi, thrice her usual size and with azure flames crackling around her paws and tail, close on the ninken’s heels.

“Still think they can tree your sister?” Naruto asked, amused.

“They might need some help,” Kurama admitted.

* * *

Takano Suetomo, Kiri ninja, slowly inched himself through the undergrowth in the training ground, fervently suppressing his chakra to prevent the Senju and sensor nin from detecting him. One didn’t shield such a large area frivolously, so whatever this place was used for, it was important and definitely something Konoha didn’t want the other villages to know.

Sure enough, he eventually got a show, and then some.

* * *

_Mizukage-sama,_

_There is no easy way to say this. Konoha has managed to seal all nine of the Bijuu into Jinchuuriki. Granted, I have only seen definitive proof of the Hachibi and the Gobi – their Jinchuuriki were sparring in that heavily warded training ground - w _hile the wards of the do block any observation from outside of the training grounds, they do not block physical entry except for sending an alert to those already within, easily avoided by infiltrating when no one was using it -_ when they underwent a partial transformation that alerted me to what they were – but even a modicum of thought with that hint makes things obvious. The Namikaze clan holds the Bijuu, the Clan Head, Namikaze Naruto, holds the Kyuubi while his “adopted” children hold the other eight. Of those, the two youngest, holders of the Sanbi and the Rokubi, are ten and eleven, young enough for successful reconditioning to be loyal to Kiri. _

_The Jinchuuriki are allowing the Bijuu to manifest small “summons” forms outside the seal, they are, in order, a tanuki (called Shukaku), a cat (Matatabi), a turtle (Isobu), a monkey (Son Goku), a horse (Kokuo), a slug (Saiken), an insect (Chomei), an ox (Gyuuki), and a fox (Kurama). All of these manifestations are capable of transforming into miniature versions of their true selves, again, I witnessed the Hachibi and Gobi do this in the spar between their Jinchuuriki. I am uncertain as to why Konoha is allowing this, though if I had to guess it is to condition Leaf shinobi to their presence so they do not panic when the Jinchuuriki eventually take to the field. If they are to be captured, we will need to restrict the Bijuu to their seal. That Yokai containment seal I saw in the kinjutsu archive should hopefully do the trick, and yes I am aware that I will need to answer how I know of it upon my return to Kiri._

_The defenses of the Namikaze compound are shockingly lax given what dwells there. While any sort of significant fortification or security measures would prompt scrutiny from the other clans and possible discovery, aside from the heavily reinforced walls there is only a simple locking seal preventing entry, which can be easily bypassed by entering the courtyard via the roof and there appears to be no internal security._

_Also, Namikaze appears to exhibit some kind of mental contamination from the Kyuubi, yet none of the other Jinchuuriki do so. It's likely that his seal is experimental._

_In other news Konoha has deployed shinobi to..._

* * *

Isobu jerked awake as he felt his avatar be forcibly dispelled, eye darting across Nagarri’s – his Chosen’s – mindscape of a sandy beach, everything dyed red from their seal which had flared to life in the sky as something caused it to go into lockdown.

“ **Nagarri-kun, what’s going on?”** he cried.

He felt Nagarri wake, panic, and promptly be knocked back unconscious.

**“Nagarri-kun?”**

 The mindscape wobbled and distorted, and Isobu felt a powerful sedative be introduced to Nagarri’s bloodstream. Realizing that his Chosen was thoroughly incapacitated, the Bijuu turned his attention inward towards the Seishin Sekai, their mental plane.

 **“Wake up!”** he yelled at the slumbering forms of his siblings, **“Wake up! We’re under attack! Nagarri’s been drugged and I’ve been sealed! Wake up!”**

He watched his siblings stir, clearly having heard him but with their attention focused on the material world. Then Saiken jerked awake.

**“I’ve been sealed and Fusaari’s drugged. Attackers are adult ninjas with no visible hitai-ate. I counted six before Fusaari lost consciousness.”**

Son Goku and Shukaku both grunted in acknowledgement while Kurama growled

**“They’re fleeing. We’re in pursuit.”**

* * *

Yoritaka led his twelve-man squad in a desperate sprint eastwards, the two child Jinchuuriki slung over the shoulders of the pair in the center of the formation. Everything had been going perfectly, right up until they had grabbed their targets. Seconds after they had applied the containment seals and drugged the kids the other Jinchuuriki had woken up. Splitting off almost three dozen water clones had managed to distract them long enough to escape Konoha, but now the forest was saturated with the Killing Intent and chakra of multiple angry Bijuu, and they were closing.

The distinctive howl of the Ichibi rent the forest, spurring the ninja on with a fresh burst of speed. They were just a few miles from a river that led to the coast, if they could get there they could break contact by merging with the river, which would sweep them downstream far faster than even a shinobi could travel without a trace.

Of course, the Mizukage had told Yoritaka to not do anything that might lead back to Kiri, but he had also instructed that the mission was critical for the continued survival of Kiri, and as those two orders were mutually exclusive now Yoritaka had chosen to complete the mission, even if it meant revealing Kiri’s involvement.

A bijuudama flew overhead and detonated several meters ahead of them, blasting a sizeable crater into the ground and felling several trees. The group slid to a stop and looked behind them. The Kyuubi no Kitsune, only three times taller than a man, bounded out of the trees and halted, its’ Jinchuuriki jumping off to land next to it, features clearly inhuman through his three-tailed chakra cloak.

“There is nowhere you can run that I cannot find you,” Namikaze growled, “Hand over my kits and I’ll let you walk away.”

The response was instant. An earth wall shot up between them and the area completely shrouded in mist, thoroughly blocking line of sight. Yoritaka grabbed the pair carrying the Jinchuuriki and they resumed their desperate sprint towards the river, leaving a trio of water clones in their place. Yoritaka heard the wall shatter and seconds later someone screamed, only to be cut off abruptly. He prayed that they would re-unite at Kiri, but the Tailed Beasts were feared for a reason, and he didn’t have much hope. They had all known the risks when they took this mission.

The three remaining ninjas reached the river without another interception and jumped in without hesitation, casting their jutsus as they did. The last thing Yoritaka saw before being swept downstream was the Hachibi reaching towards him with one of its tentacle-tails.

* * *

Byakuren was jolted from a sound sleep when a wave of unfathomably immense chakra flooded Kiri and seven voices boomed

**“Mizukage! You will speak with us!”**

It was a matter of seconds before Byakuren was out his door, the Seven Swordsmen falling in around him, as he charged towards the disturbance, which was worryingly coming from his office complex. Rounding a corner, he was confronted by the sight of seven house-sized Bijuu sitting in front of his office, their Jinchuuriki standing before them.

Shit. Just how badly had the mission failed?

The eldest human of the lot, Namikaze Naruto, it had to be, stepped forward.

“Tell me, Mizukage, what exactly were you thinking when you ordered two of my kits to be kidnapped?”

Deny, deny, deny.

“I gave no such orders, Namikaze-san,” Byakuren said, “If ninja from the Land of Water were involved in such a deed, I assure you that they are missing-nin.”

At his statement several of the Bijuu gave a short sarcastic laugh, clearly not buying it.

“In that case,” Namikaze said, “you wont mind if we hang around for a few days in case these, ah, ‘missing-nin’ show up with two of my kits to beg a pardon, would you?”

As a matter of fact, he did mind. He minded quite a lot. But while he would have been perfectly willing to pit himself and the Seven Swordsmen against any two of the Bijuu, Samehada had been designed for such a fight after all, but against seven of the nine, even with the whole of the village backing them, the fight would only go one way.

As he opened his mouth to concede to the Jinchuuriki’s demands, he really had no choice in the matter, some hothead launched a fireball at Namikaze. His eyes them widened in horror as Namikaze proceeded to bat the fireball back at its caster, fanning it with a wind jutsu so that when it detonated it took out multiple ninja, and then things very rapidly devolved into extremely bloody chaos.

* * *

Yoritaka watched the two Jinchuuriki where they stood at the prow of the ship. It had been a week since the harrowing escape from Konoha, but now he was almost home. Then the ship rounded the final headland and his heart fell to his boots. Massive holes had been blasted in Kiri’s wall, through which he could see even greater destruction, the extensive docks were shattered, and the half of Kiri’s legendary fleet that wasn’t sunk was scattered all over the beaches, up to and against the walls, smashed to unsalvageable wreckage where it wasn’t smoldering ash.

So caught up in the horror of what he was looking at the he completely missed the sound of the sea being shed off of several massive somethings, or the sound of seven pairs of feet hitting the deck.

“I told you it was pointless to run from me.”

Yoritaka spun around to see the other seven Jinchuuriki standing on the aft deck, their bijuu looming behind them at their full size, standing on top of the sea.

“Tou-san!” the remaining two Jinchuuriki cried, sprinting towards the seven. Yoritaka let them, instead sagging against the ship’s railing in defeat. He had lost. No, that was too mild of a description. He had failed so spectacularly that Kiri had fallen as a direct result of his actions. After listening to the babble of happy children as the four youngest Jinchuuriki reconnected for a few minutes Yoritaka spoke.

“Go. Just,” his voice broke and he turned to look back at the wreckage of his home, “just go.”

There was a pause before the Jinchuuriki clambered off the ship onto one of the bijuu, he didn’t turn to see which.

“We left the Mizukage alive,” Namikaze abruptly said, “Minus an arm, a hand, a working spine, and in the shattered remains of six of the seven swords, but alive.”

And then he was gone. There was a _whoosh_ of something moving at high speed and distantly he heard

**“Last one home is slower than a slug.”**

**“Don’t pick on Saiken, Kurama, you know that’s not fair.”**

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, everyone knows what Naruto and co. are now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have several new jutsus that I'm trying to translate into Japanese, but whenever I plug their English names into a translator I get the answer in Kanji rather than Latin Script. i.e. If I'm trying to translate "Tailed Beast", I don't want the Kanji symbol, I want to get "Bijuu". Anyone know a translator that does that?

Naruto woke to the pounding of small fists on his bedroom door, dawn filtering in through the shuttered windows.

“What?” he called, yawning and blinking blearily, trying to get his eyes to focus. He was old, it took some time for him to start working in the mornings.

“Uzumaki Mito’s here,” Fusaari called back.

“Thank you.”

Staggering upright he grabbed his favorite orange yukata and pulled it on as Kurama happily stole his freshly vacated warm spot. Padding out to the entrance hall of the compound he met a somewhat annoyed Mito at the doors.

“Namikaze. You know why I’m here.”

Naruto nodded and beckoned her in. Returning to his quarters he noticed Mito pausing in the doorway staring at Kurama curled up on the futon.

“Let him sleep,” he said, “He’s far older than even me and you know how the elderly need their naps.”

Kurama creakily opened one eye to glare at Naruto before dropping back into a doze like the lazy fox he was. Mito swallowed and entered, closing the door behind her.

“I’ll get right to it then. How the hell did you manage to tame the Bijuu?”

“Same way you ‘tamed’ Hashirama I expect,” Naruto replied, pouring himself a glass of water.

“I didn’t take you for bestiality.”

Had the drink been anything other than water it probably would have gone through the wall when Naruto spat it out. He and Kurama stared at Mito in horrified revulsion before loudly protesting the accusation. As their protestations winded down the pair glowered at Mito, who had a very small smile curving her lips.

“For the record,” Naruto grumbled, “I meant with love and affection, not whatever your perverted mind came up with.”

“Indeed,” Kurama growled, “All the Bijuu are asexual chakra constructs. We are completely incapable of reproduction and lack the associated psychological drives. I call myself male because I self-identify with the male gender, but calling myself female would be equally valid.”

“So I should start referring to you as a girl then?” Mito asked.

“Don’t you dare! If I wanted to be referred to as a girl I’d have dyed my fur pink long ago.”

Kurama froze, then shot Naruto a suspicious look, who’s face was filled with as much innocence as an old person could manage. Looking pained the fox muttered

“I need to stop giving you ammunition.”

Naruto grinned and sat at the small table against one of the windows, gesturing for Mito to take a seat opposite, and when she did so he asked

“I assume that you didn’t just come here to horrify us, so what else do you want to know?”

Mito opened her mouth, paused, gave Kurama a contemplative look, and said slowly

“All my life the Bijuu have been called mindless and sadistic monsters of destruction, hatred and malice incarnate.” She turned to look at Naruto. “But that’s not exactly true, is it.”

Naruto’s eyebrows shot up at the observation. He hadn’t thought that Mito would realize that so quickly.

“Two thousand years ago, the land was ravaged by an unfathomably monstrous being, known as the Juubi, created when Ōtsutsuki Kaguya, the mother of the Sage of the Six Paths, fused with something known as the God Tree…”

He led her through what he knew of the war between Kaguya and her sons, through the final fight in what was now known as the Mountain’s Graveyard – this was a war for the survival of the entire planet, of course they wouldn’t have fought alone, entire species of Sage Animals fought and perished alongside them until only the current three remained – and how, in the twilight years of his life the Sage realized that the Juubi would not die with him, but would eventually reform, so to prevent it…

“He created the Bijuu,” Mito breathed, “A nine part seal against Armageddon, each one entrusted with a shard of a god.” She frowned. “How did they become viewed as engines of destruction rather than indominable guardians though?”

Naruto sighed.

“Because of Indra’s jealousy. When the Sage decided to retire from being clan head to focus on the Bijuu he chose Asura instead of his eldest Indra. You know what being a Clan head, a Kage, requires, there is far more involved than simply being the strongest one around. And while Indra wouldn’t have been a bad candidate, Asura was simply a far better choice.” His mouth quirked upwards. “For much the same reason Hashirama was chosen as Hokage instead of Madara I understand. Indra retaliated by attempting to kill his father and brother, but while he was driven off, Hagoromo, weakened by age and never truly having recovered from the immense stress of creating the Bijuu, died.”

Naruto sighed.

“Kurama was thirteen months old. Mentally, roughly equivalent to a seven- or eight-year-old. Now an orphan. You’ve seen the way civilians look at shinobi outside of the Villages, what they say behind our backs when they think we’re not listening. Now imagine what is was like two thousand years ago, when shinobi were so rare that most of the continent didn’t even know that they existed, and how they would have reacted to someone who was not, and never had been, human.”

Seeing the frown on Mito’s face, he impulsively reached out, touched her hand, and used ninshuu to show her one of Kurama’s earliest memories.

* * *

_The village was a fairly large one, for the time period, with at least a hundred residents, situated adjacent to a forest with the distinctive trees found in the Land of Fire. One could even call it quaint. But not, currently, peaceful. Situated on the only road, a dirt track really, that led out of the village between the two outermost houses was a large mass of men armed with farming implements facing off against Kurama, then merely the size of a large house and with the proportions of a kit. Hatred and a bit of fear saturated the air._

_“Why do you hate me so?” Kurama asked, his voice still having the tenor of a child, lacking the deep booming quality of an adult Bijuu._

_“Because you’re a monster,” the man leading the mob said, brandishing his pitchfork._

_“No, I’m not,” Kurama cried._

_“You are. You’re a kitsune, a trickster, that means that every word out of your mouth is a lie. Guess what, beast? I can see through your lies. Your tricks will not work on me. Perhaps I should just kill-“_

_The pitchfork lunged towards Kurama’s eyes. Kurama flinched, his paw instinctively snapping out to bat the man away from him. The man flew into the side of a house with a sickening crack, bouncing off and hitting the ground with a thud, head impacting a protruding stone._

_Even the hatred in the air faded as everyone stared in shock._

_“…Human-san?” Kurama timidly asked, “Are you ok? I didn’t mean to hit you.”_

_When no response came save for the slowly growing pool of blood beneath the man’s head, the mob started to whisper._

_“Is he dead?”_

_“The fox killed him.”_

_“I don’t believe it.”_

_“Kill the beast!” Someone shouted._

_Hatred resurged, fanning flames of rage._

_“Kill the beast!” More people took up the cry, “Kill the beast! Kill the beast!”_

_The mob surged forwards, brandishing their weapons and driven by mad fervor._

**_“Kill the beast!”_ **

_Kurama turned and fled into the forest, tears in his eyes and the villager’s chant ringing in his ears._

**_“KILL THE BEAST!”_ **

* * *

“Thank you so much for bringing that memory to the forefront of my mind, Naruto,” Kurama snarled from his place on the futon before switching his glare to Mito “And I don’t need any pity from you.”

Mito stayed quiet, though she discretely rubbed her eyes.

“Go hunt some rats,” Naruto said, “That always makes you feel better.”

Kurama glared some more.

“Fine, but don’t think I didn’t catch you thinking about showing her the first time a human used and betrayed me. If you show her that I’ll bite off your toes and grow them back wrong.”

The fox jumped from futon to windowsill, nosed open the shutter, and disappeared into Konoha.

“Rats?” Mito asked.

“Stress relief. No one complains if he kills a bunch of them.”

Mito nodded.

“That memory was surprisingly clear for being two millennia old.”

“The Bijuu have perfect recall.”

“They remember everything?”

“Everything. Every slight, insult, and betrayal.”

Mito winced.

“Given all that, how the hell did you manage to get them to allow you to seal them into humans?”

Naruto just sat there looking at her with a knowing smirk.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“Nope.”

She sighed in exasperation.

“So kind of seal did you use? Not a Jinchuuriki seal obviously, yet I cannot come up with any others that can contain a Tailed Beast of the Kyu- _of Kurama’s_ power.”

Naruto stared at her for a long while, gaze judging, assessing. Finally, he spoke

“The seal in question is a project that I began when I was seventeen, but despite nearly a century of work, it does not change that I am not a seal master. My fuuinjutsu sensei was killed barely three years into my training, and we had focused on combat seals and ninjutsu, not on esoteric aspects that such a seal requires. I am certain that, given even a short amount of time a true Uzushio Seal Master would figure out how to break it, a specialist like you would likely not only figure out how to break the seal, but also reseal the Bijuu into an actual Jinchuuriki simultaneously in the field with minimal prep work. You are also on record, as recently as four months ago, as saying that the Bijuu should be tracked down and sealed into Jinchuuriki.”

Mito winced again.

“So you might understand why I have reservations about showing you the seal, Seal Master Mito.”

There was several minutes of silence. Mito took a breath.

“I was wrong.”

Naruto raised an eyebrow in askance, a habit he had picked up from Sasuke.

“I won’t say that the revelation that you and your kids have the Bijuu posing as pets haven’t changed anything – it has, massively so. But I can see why you hid that knowledge, and I am self-aware enough to admit that you were probably right to do so. Had I known their identities right off the bat I… probably would have done something unwise.”

Naruto looked her for a moment, tapping into Kurama's emphatic abilities to judge her sincerity, before smiling slightly.

Getting up he went to a blank section if wall and channeled a sliver of Kurama’s chakra into a hidden seal that caused the wall to crack open into a swirling vortex of distorted space-time, which Naruto then reached into and withdrew a locked iron container covered in seals as long as his arm and as wide and deep as his spread hand, the hole in reality closing the moment the box cleared the rift.

Mito stared.

“What was _that_?” she breathed.

“Secure storage,” Naruto commented idly, “Maybe I’ll show you it sometime.”

Placing the box on the table he pricked his thumb with his canines and smeared the blood, also infused with Kurama’s chakra, onto a specific seal, which absorbed the blood and briefly glowed red before the box unsealed with a heavy _ka-thunk_. Opening the box revealed a scroll made from thick vellum, its axle welded to the box. Unravelling the scroll a bit, he surveyed the numerous storage seals inked onto the vellum before selecting one and withdrawing a large scroll, which he then handed to Mito. Unrolling it Mito inhaled in surprise.

“That’s one of the earliest versions of the Chosen seal,” Naruto said, neglecting to add that he had recreated it for the express purpose of having an Uzushio Seal Master to look over. That Mito was the first to earn sufficient trust was coincidental.

“I’d have thought less of you if this was the version you were using,” Mito said, eyes dancing across the seal inscribed on the scroll, “Looks like you started with the Eight Trigrams as a base, though these parts here, here, and here are weaker than they could be…”

* * *

Hashirama strode up to the doors of the Namikaze compound, looking for a wife. Said wife had vanished into said compound this morning and it was now approaching dinner without anyone having seen her since. Knocking on the door he felt one of the Bijuu come to answer it.

“Greetings Tokinari-chan,” He cheerfully greeted the fourteen-year-old as he opened the door, “and, er, do you prefer Hachibi or Gyuuki?”

“We prefer people use our actual names,” the bull grumbled from where he was standing behind his Chosen.

“Gyuuki then. I’m looking for Mito, is she still here?”

Tokinari nodded. Teenagers could be so helpful at times.

“She’s here,” Gyuuki grumbled, “She and Naruto got to talking about seals and…”

Hashirama chuckled.

“Say no more, I fully understand. If you would be so kind to lead me to her, oh great being of benevolent doom, I will get her out of your tentacles.”

Gyuuki gave Hashirama a particularly flat look before turning around and heading into the compound.

“Come on.”

Hashirama followed the pair through the compound to a large bedroom, once tidy but now with the floor covered in half-furled scrolls, Mito and Naruto sitting on the floor in front of a scroll with a half-finished seal on it, happily babbling to each other about some exotic branch of fuuinjutsu that went right over Hashirama’s head while occasionally adding marks to the seal. Neither noticed his presence nor that of Gyuuki, though Kurama did. The fox glanced between him and Naruto before an evil smirk crossed his features.

Changing form from fox to kyuubi, though still fox-sized, something that caused Hashirama to twitch in surprise, Kurama wandered past the oblivious pair to a jug of water. Pouring a glass, the fox quietly crept up behind Naruto and dumped the glass over his head. Naruto yelped and arched his back in shock.

“Kurama! What was that for?”

“Payback for showing Uzumaki that memory without my permission. Also, her mate’s here.”

The pair looked over at Hashirama and flushed with embarrassment.

“I missed lunch, didn’t I?” Mito asked sheepishly.

“It’s almost time for dinner,” Hashirama said.

The pair heaved themselves to their feet.

“We have to do this again sometime,” Mito said.

“Yes, I’ve learned more about fuuinjutsu today than in the last decade.”

“Didn’t you spend most of that decade wandering around in the wilderness?”

“Details, details.”

The pair carefully made their way through the scrolls to the door.

“Oh, before I forget,” Mito said, “Is there anyone else we can talk to about the early history of the Bijuu?”

“Gamamaru, The Great Toad Sage,” Naruto replied instantly, “He’s so old he remembers the time _before_ Kaguya, though he’s starting to go senile. Hagoromo himself considered the old toad a peer. Course to talk with him you’ll need to find the Toad Summoning Contract, and I have no idea who holds it or where it is.”

“I’ll keep an ear out,” Hashirama promised as the pair reached him and he led Mito out.

“Early history of the Bijuu?” he asked on the way home.

“An unsung tragedy,” Mito answered, “I’ll tell you later after I write it down so it isn’t forgotten.”

* * *

Naruto stared at himself in the mirror for a long moment.

"Huh," he finally said.

"What is it?" Kurama asked.

"I'm growing fur."

"What?"

Naruto felt Kurama look though his eyes, both of them focusing on the hand-sized patch of snow-white fur that was growing over Naruto's heart.

* * *

Within a week, the entire world heard of the Fall of Kiri to the Bijuu. Within a week, envoys had come from the remaining major Villages and many minor ones, all bearing formal requests for mutual non-aggression pacts. Word also came of two minor nations, Wave and Forests, approaching the Fire Daimyo with requests to become protectorates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always felt that the Story of the Bijuu is one of the untold tragedies of the Naruto-verse.
> 
> Also, nothing save for world conquest - which the Bijuu have absolutely no interest in - can stop the First Shinobi War, but with Kiri having already been knocked out and everyone making damn certain that Konoha stays neutral, the war proceeds very differently.
> 
> Naruto has gotten very good at speaking the truth while saying something very different with it.
> 
> Yes, Naruto based his secure storage off of Kamui. It can only be opened with a Bijuu's chakra and the box requires human blood that has been at least somewhat mutated by the prescience of a Bijuu.


	5. Chapter 5

Akisada stumped around the small shop he had purchased in Konoha, preparing it for opening. The war had been raging for two years by now, with none of the three major powers, Suna, Kumo, or Iwa, gaining any major ground. Every time it looked like one of the powers would claim a major advantage, the other two teamed up to make sure they wouldn’t get it. Course, the war was no longer his problem. After losing his wife, his sons, and his leg to the war, Akisada had requested this assignment from the Kazekage, a long term, possibly permanent, assignment as an observer in Konoha. A retirement cum exile in all but name. His exact orders, listed on a scroll that he had “carelessly” left in plain view of the window of his apartment above the shop, were

_To observe any possible machinations by other countries with intent to draw Konoha into the war. While Konoha joining in on Suna’s side is preferable, having them join in on Iwa or Kumo is to be prevented at all costs. In order to facilitate this, you are granted permission to liaise with Konoha’s Intelligence divisions at your discretion, as well as being a discrete point of contact for passing clandestine messages between Suna and Konoha._

That said, it had been Akisada’s idea to pose as a tradesman from Suna selling dolls and stuffed animals, though some of his choices of what to make stuffed animals of had been a bit… controversial. The coin made would mean that Suna wouldn’t have to give him a stipend, and every little bit helps the war effort, right? That seeing the delight of small children helped him during the night had absolutely no influence.

Setting up a chair where he could discreetly look out the open front door, the stairway and the backdoor, he pulled out Suna’s most recent Bingo Book, henged to look like a history book, and sat down to read Konoha’s section. After all, he probably would end up interacting with those listed so it would be a good idea to know who to absolutely avoid pissing off.

* * *

_Namikaze Naruto; No known titles/aliases_

_Birthplace: Unknown; Allegiance: Konoha; Age: 100+, exact age unknown_

_Threat: Bijuu scale. Flee on sight, no exceptions. Can call upon the power of the Kyuubi no Kitsune and even release it at will._

_Reward: None. As the Fall of Kiri showed, attacking any one of the Bijuu containers provokes the ire of the other eight. As such, the Kazekage has stated that he will personally execute anyone foolish enough to attack Namikaze. However, there is a 5,000 ryo bounty on information on Namikaze’s past. 10,000 for knowledge of the whereabouts of the village, or its ruins, he came from._

_Description: Elderly male with fox-red hair, six whisker marks on each cheek, blue eyes with a vertical pupil, small black claws in place of nails on hands and feet._

_Kekkei Genkai: None_

_Tactical Notes: There is little information on what Namikaze can do when not using the abilities of the Kyuubi no Kitsune, but he has been observed using Jutsus of all affinities and is extremely fond of the Shadow Clone technique, regularly spamming dozens of clones even for day-to-day work, with no known upper limit thanks to access to the Kyuubi’s chakra. Despite his extreme age, Namikaze is capable of keeping pace and physically matching many elite ninja. Always be on the lookout for a red fox called “Kurama”, which can be summoned by and to him. It is an avatar of the Kyuubi, despite being sealed within Namikaze, and is fully capable of using its chakra and taking independent action. Occasionally Namikaze takes younger containers outside of Konoha on training missions against bandits and nuke-nin, but as the Fall of Kiri shows, he is unafraid of taking them into heavy battle despite their young age. If encountered outside of Konoha always assume that there are between one and three other Bijuu Containers nearby. Claims to be a mostly self-taught fuuinjutsu expert, but has recently been training with Uzumaki Mito. Expect seals in combat._

_History: First appeared at Konoha’s gates with eight children and nine Bijuu in tow. Has gone on record that the he clan that he founded, including at least great-grandchildren, and the village he lived in are dead and destroyed, however no records have been located of either. He is the son a male civilian born ninja and a bastard female Uzumaki._

_Personality: Cheerful and carefree, with a tendency to prank people who annoy him. Also highly intelligent, extremely cunning, and more than a little manipulative._

_Notable actions and kills:_

_Fall of Kirigakure – involved in the death of the Seven Swordsmen, crippling of the Mizukage, and destruction of the village._

* * *

“Look Kurama, it’s chibi you!”

Akisada snapped his gaze away from the bingo book to see none other than Namikaze staring at his store window in mischievous delight, though the fox, the Kyuubi, on his shoulder was gaping in horror. Specifically, they were staring at the nine Bijuu plushies, one for each of them, that Akisada had set up in the store window last night when the shipment came in. Snarling the Kyuubi leapt off Namikaze’s shoulder at the display, only to be caught by Namikaze.

“I am not cute!” The Kyuubi cried, struggling in the arms of the laughing human, “I am a being of untold majesty and power, not something to be cuddled by snot-nosed brats!”

Namikaze wandered away, laughing, even as the Kyuubi continued to howl his indignation at seeing a plushy version of himself. Akisada waited until the pair were gone before calmly yet quickly removed the Bijuu plushies from display to a shelf that he tripled checked had no direct line of sight to any of the windows or doors.

Several hours later, sitting behind the counter as he watched his latest customer walk off with an Ichibi doll, Akisada heard a mature female voice coming from confusingly close to the ground on the other side of the counter.

“Kurama-nii-san was right, you do have plushie versions of us.”

Sweat prickling his forehead in apprehension, Akisada leaned over the counter to see a particularly large housecat with blue-gray fur and black markings looking at the plushie of the Nibi, visible from the counter, which had near identical fur color and markings he was displeased to note. The cat looked up at him with mis-matched eyes, green and yellow.

“Merchant-san.”

“Nibi-sama.”

The Nibi lashed her tail.

“My name,” she said with a hint of annoyance, “is Matatabi.”

“Apologies, Matatabi-sama.”

Looking back at the plushies the Bijuu gave a small sigh.

“Tempting as it is to get the one of my brother in revenge for his regular attempts to get the Inuzuka ninken to tree me, they are sadly a bit to expensive for something that would be destroyed in short order.”

She looked back at him.

“We _are_ getting a cut of the proceeds, are we not?”

Akisada felt sweat start to glisten on his forehead.

“Of course,” he said, managing not to squeak.

“See that we do,” The Nibi said, already winding her way towards the doors, “Good day, merchant-san.”

Akisada barely waited for her to leave the shop before he dove for his receipt box.

* * *

The sun had set by the time Akisada had finished setting up the cut of the Bijuu plushies to be delivered to the Namikaze compound. Staggering up to his apartment he paused at the sight of a book sitting on his futon, not having been there when he had come up for lunch, with a small scrap of paper on it. Cautiously, he picked it up.

_This book is coming out next month. Thought the Kazekage might want an advance copy._

_-Hokage Senju Hashirama_

Putting down the note and picking up the book, he read the title with interest before flipping it open and reading the foreword, eyebrows climbing as he did so. Yes, the Kazeage would most definitely want a copy.

* * *

Reto looked up at the knock on his door.

“Come in.”

Hirosue, his head of intelligence entered carrying a folder.

“Akisada’s report on Konoha. Also, the Hokage gave him a book to send along to us, we’re examining it now.”

Accepting the folder Reto curiously asked

“What book?”

“ _History of the Bijuu_ by Uzumaki Mito. According to the foreword she interviewed the nine Bijuu and a toad summons by the name of Gamamaru, who supposedly remembers the Sage of the Six Paths.”

“Really?” It wasn’t often that Reto was surprised, but this definitely did the job.

Hirosue nodded.

“We lack the ability to independently confirm the information, but given the well known pride of several of the Bijuu it is unlikely to be false, so we are treating it as true. We’ll have a preliminary brief for you in a few days.”

“Thank you,” Reto nodded, “dismissed.”

As Hirosue left Reto flipped open the folder, revealing a letter and several pages of financial information.

_Kazekage-sama,_

_I have had no problems settling in and setting up shop in Konoha, and a line of communication has been established, so I won’t end up in Konoha’s T &I if you need me to deliver a message. As a whole, Konoha seems wary of the fighting raging around them, but have little interest in joining in, though there’s always a vocal minority. Interestingly, said minority tends to get very quiet whenever they realize one of the Bijuu are nearby. In addition, the Fire Daimyo has been trying to pressure the Hokage to join the war for the last couple of months, but abruptly stopped three weeks ago. Coincidentally, Namikaze returned from the capital at the same time. _

_The Bijuu plushies are selling extremely well, as I thought, but none of us thought to consider what the Bijuu themselves thought before going forward. The Ichibi, Yonbi, and Kyuubi are offended, though the Gobi, and possibly the Nibi, are delighted. The rest very between tolerance and apathy. Regardless, I'll need a new shipment immediately._

_Speaking of the Bijuu, I have discovered that they are only truly loyal to their human “Chosen” – not Jinchuuriki, they are bound together via a completely separate process that apparently requires consent of both human and Bijuu – and not towards the Village, though they will defend their place of residence. What this means is that it may be possible to convince one of the Bijuu to relocate to Suna. Using them offensively won’t happen, trying to do so would get them to leave fairly quickly, but will make Suna near impossible to assault. As Shukaku has long been affiliated with the desert, I believe he would be best to approach…_

* * *

Hirotomo sat atop the large ridge overlooking Konoha, Shukaku in his lap being brushed, not that the Bijuu would ever admit he enjoyed it, or cuddling, or that for the first time in millennia he had precious people outside of his siblings.

Their private ritual was interrupted when the side of the Hokage’s tower exploded outwards, Mokouton branches reaching for a single figure that fled through the smoke and shrapnel towards the Village’s wall. Brushing a hand against his new Hitai-ate, a sketch of a tanuki’s head facing right with a single line pointing left, he glanced down at Shukaku and the both had the same thought.

 ** _Hunting time_** , the Tanuki mentally sang as he leapt out of Hirotomo’s lap, growing to the size of a horse. Grinning, the Chosen lightly swung astride the Bijuu, who then grew to the size of a two-story house and leapt off the mountainous ridge after the fleeing figure, his signature hunting howl echoing across Konoha as he unfurled his chakra signature.

Landing in a courtyard Shukaku bounded up onto rooftops, using chakra to both stick and spread his weight so that he didn’t go through them as he chased after the fleeing shinobi, savoring the taste of the intruder’s panic as he realized that he was being chased by one of the Bijuu. Despite rapidly closing the distance they were unable to catch up before the intruder made it over the wall, but unlike the other the other shinobi in pursuit Shukaku didn’t stop at the Village boundary and plunged into the forest after the intruder.

It took less than a minute for the Bijuu and Chosen to realize that the shinobi was faster moving through the trees than they were on the ground, so Hirotomo unsealed a large gourd, decorated with inlays of desert scenes and filled with sand. It had been a gift from Suna, and one Shukaku now put to good use, summoning the sand and generating a violent sandstorm in the path of the ninja, so violent that it was stripping bark, leaves, and branches from trees in its path and was more than capable of doing the same to flesh.

Not recognizing the danger, the shinobi leapt into the sandstorm, only to yelp and bound out onto the ground right in front of Shukaku, who barely altered stride to pounce on the sanded shinobi. The shinobi responded by summoning an earth wall that the Bijuu shattered through, but was slowed enough for the ninja to dodge. Understandably distracted by the giant tanuki in front of him, the ninja failed to notice the surge of sand silently creeping up behind him. It took less than a second for Shukaku to encase the shinobi in his sand, and another fraction to implode it, killing him.

Silence filled the forest, broken only by Hirotomo’s adrenaline fueled panting and Shukaku’s deep regular breathing. Eventually Shukaku withdrew the sand bank to the gourd, revealing the grisly, bloody mess of pulped meat that the ninja had been reduced to. Feeling Hirotomo’s nausea, he rumbled

“ **If you’re going to throw up, don’t do it on me.”**

The human swallowed several times before forcing out

“I think I’m good.”

Turning as Kurama bounded to a stop next to him, equally as large and with Naruto also on his back he said

**“You’re late.”**

Kurama glared but it was Naruto who answered

“We were home when the attack happened. That the intruder?”

At Shukaku’s nod he sighed in relief.

“Good. If Kakuzu had gotten away, he would have become a threat to even us.”

Naruto smiled at the pair even as Hirotomo wondered to Shukaku at Naruto’s certainty about that.

“Good job you two.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In regard to rankings, the ge-chuu-jou ninja and D-S threat ranking systems have yet to be invented and adopted at this time, though Tobirama is already drawing up the plans for them.
> 
> So thoughts on the Bingo Book entry? I thought it was a good idea on how to show what the other nations know of Naruto.


	6. Chapter 6

The crowd that had gathered in front of the Hokage’s tower quieted as Tobirama, the Second Hokage, appeared in front of them, Hiruzen standing behind and to his left.

“Konoha,” he called, causing the rumble of the large crowd to slowly quiet, “Konoha. For the last three years, ever since Hashirama died because he ignored everyone’s pleas to retire, or at least slow down, I have been your Hokage. But I knew even when I accepted the position from my brother on his deathbed that I would not hold it for long. I am not a young man. My age weighs heavily on me, and the position of Hokage is a heavy one. As such, as the great war between the Villages of Iwa, Kumo, and Suna has ended, I am retiring in favor of my student Sarutobi Hiruzen, now the Sandaime Hokage!”

Naruto applauded with everyone else, the sleeves of his orange haori sliding down enough to expose the orange fur that was growing on the outside of his forearms, his hitai-ate (bearing a sketch of a fox looking right, nine lines pointing left) tied such that it covered the now pointed tips of his ears. As Hiruzen stepped forward and began the speech that he had prepared with assistance from Tobirama and Naruto – _him, helping the man he once called Jiji and who now called him sama and occasionally sensei_ – Naruto let his gaze wander over the group of people standing behind the Nidaimi and Sandaime, eventually landing on Danzo, who was staring straight ahead with a completely blank expression, likely still angry at not getting the position. Naruto vaguely recalled often cursing the man in his teenage years, but for the life of him could not remember why. Granted, that had been over a hundred and thirty years ago for him, some memory loss was expected.

“Something wrong?” Mito asked from where she sat next to him.

“I have a persistent feeling that Danzo is going to do something… unwise,” Naruto admitted.

“Danzo?” Mito looked at the man. “Wasn’t he Tobirama’s other candidate for Hokage?’

Naruto nodded.

“He was rejected on the grounds of being too ruthless and war-hungry. Believes that, as Konoha has two times as many ninja as the next largest Village, due to us having suffered no losses during the war compared to the catastrophic damages the other villages suffered - hell, us Chosen and Bijuu singlehandedly wiped our nearly half of Kiri’s ninja, and the civil war that sprang up after their kage’s assassination only depleted their numbers further. I don’t think they’ll ever become one of the major powers. Anyway, Danzo believes that it is Konoha’s destiny to rule the elemental countries, with your sandals on everyone’s necks.”

Mito frowned slightly.

“You think he’s going to cause a war?”

“Nothing so overt, especially as long as Tobirama is alive to keep him in line. But I worry that he might manufacture an incident to force Konoha’s involvement in the next war.”

“ _Next_ war?”

Naruto gave her a flat look.

“We’re shinobi.”

“…True enough. Though sometimes I wish that we know something other than death.”

Naruto mulled that over in his head for a minute.

“…Perhaps some kind of retirement program? Using jutsus to create rather than destroy?”

“You mean making things like your elemental orbs? Using chakra to entertain, inspire, and awe?”

Mito smiled at the thought.

“I think I like that idea. Might be a good coping mechanism too.”

“There are far too many who can destroy in the blink of an eye without thought or intent,” Kurama said solemnly from where he was sitting by Naruto’s left foot, “And far too few who create and bring forth life.”

He looked at Mito.

“You should bring this up with Tobirama once the ceremony is over.”

“Why won’t… oh, right you two have your monthly appointment to get to.”

Naruto nodded. The once small patch of fur on his chest had expanded to cover his entire torso and spread to the outside of his thighs, turning to Kurama’s unique shade of red-orange over his flanks and back, over the years since Kiri. When it was eventually revealed Tobirama, in one of his first acts as Hokage, had ordered Naruto – who was not technically under his command – to report to the hospital at least once a month so that his mutations could be tracked and analyzed. Naruto would have baulked if it wasn’t for the fact that both he and Kurama were curious as well. So far, despite how obvious his mutations were – eyes, nails, fur, markings, and most recently ears – they were all purely cosmetic in nature, quite literally skin deep and no further.

“But I haven’t blown myself up or taken any major injuries this month, so the rate of mutation should be minimal.”

“Considering you’re experimenting with bijuudama derivatives, that’s actually quite surprising,” Mito muttered.

Naruto grinned.

“That’s why I used shadow clones. All the boom and learning with none of the pain.”

Mito rolled her eyes.

“You can be as exasperating as Hashirama was, you know that?”

“I’m quite proud of that. Ah, Hiruzen’s done, so I should leave. Good day, Mito.”

“You too, Naruto, Kurama. Give my greetings to Tsunade-chan while you’re there.”

“That’s right, she just graduated to chunin, didn’t she. I’ll do that.”

* * *

The Second Shinobi War kicked off right on schedule a generation later, with three of the Four Great Villages once more going at it hammer and tongs with the minor nations between them the site of numerous battles that left the landscape, and farming economy, of the nations in ruins while Kiri became pirate central, launching numerous raids on coastal countries as pirates preyed on the ocean trade lanes without fear. Once more, Konoha stayed out of the fighting, and none of the other powers were keen to poke the greatest of the Villages. Indeed, one could even say that Konoha prospered, with so many nations at war banditry was on the rise and Konoha was the only one with the manpower to fulfil the demand, even taking escort missions in other countries, Hiruzen having quietly negotiated for the other nations to receive a cut of the profits in exchange for allowing Konoha shinobi passage.

Then things took a bizarre turn.

Hanzo, up till now having been perfectly content keeping the other major powers from fighting in Rain, abruptly launched an invasion of Fire country, claiming that Konoha had tried to assassinate him. Hiruzen truthfully claimed that he had ordered no such thing, and while most believed the Hokage, Hanzo wasn’t one of them.  Of the nearly three hundred shinobi subsequently sent against him, all jounin, only thirty, including Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orichimaru, returned, the three having earned the title of Sannin for facing Hanzo and being the only ones to have done so and survived, despite being defeated. The only good news was that they had at least inflicted heavy casualties on Hanzo’s forces and made him check his advance.

Then Hanzo did something… stupid.

Sanehiko, with Son Goku clinging to his back like the monkey he was, ducked into the small inn just a dozen kilometers north of the battleline, on his way back to Konoha from Grass, dripping wet from the rain outside. Purchasing two bowls of takikomi from the innkeeper they had just barely sat down when a ninja without a hitai-ate plunked himself down in the chair opposite them. Man and monkey-construct eyed him with identical suspicious looks, both with chopsticks in hand.

“I’m not entertaining people,” Sanehiko said.

“I just have one question,” the ninja said, “If Hanzo reaches Konoha, would you fight to defend it?”

Given that two of Sanehiko and Son Goku’s precious people, Naruto and Kurama, lived there the answer was obvious.

“Of course.”

The ninja stood and nodded. Sanehiko’s eyes widened and he lunged to the side, causing the kunai that had been aimed at his spine to instead go into his left lung. The chair exploded as Sanehiko summoned two chakra tails while the table shattered as Son Goku threw himself at the assassin in front of them, only for the target to shunshin out of the way. As Son landed on the wall behind his target Sanehiko exploded a ninja with an Ame headband that tried to stab him in the back with a miniature bijuudama. Both felt the pain of poison begin to spread from the kunai as three more Ame ninja shunshined into the inn.

 _I’ve got the ninjas; you handle the poison!_ Sanehiko thought to Son, who dispelled himself with a sense of acknowledgement.

Bringing one of his tails of power to bear Son Goku began to systematically burn the poison out of his Chosen, steadily reducing Sanehiko's blood-fill left lung to charcoal as collateral.

 _Better his lung than his life_ , the Bijuu thought, _besides, between Tsunade and Orochimaru I’m sure Sanehiko can get a new lung._

But just as Son finished, and Sanehiko blew apart another assassin – his tenth – having carefully moderated his power so he didn’t accidentally kill the half-dozen civilians still cowering in the inn or bring the building down on their heads, there was a flash of white chakra steel and Son lost all perception of the outside world as his Chosen was decapitated from behind.

Son Goku froze in shock and disbelief. Even as the seal slowly began to disintegrate with the Chosen’s death, he remained stationary, mind blank as he struggled to comprehend how he had lost his Chosen, his most precious person, his second true friend in two thousand years. Feeling the collapsing seal begin to force him out brought Son back to reality. The Bijuu snarled with grief-filled rage and turned his attention to the part of the seal that Naruto had called “one last ‘fuck you’.”

Broadcasting his last memories to his siblings across their mental plane, Son Goku triggered the seal’s self-destruct. The small village, unnamed on all but the most detailed maps, vanished amid a brilliant and thunderous crimson detonation, blasting a crater three kilometers wide and five hundred meters deep. It would eventually become known as Sanehiko Lake, the resting place of the first Chosen to die.

It would take Son Goku over ten years to reform.

In Konoha a wave of killing intent brought nearly everyone to their knees, something that had not been felt since the Fall of Kiri, as the four Bijuu currently living there turned rage filled gazes west towards Hanzo.

* * *

The first inkling Hanzo had that things were about to go badly wrong was when there was a brilliant bloody flash to the north and a wave of Bijuu chakra and killing intent rolled over his encampment like a shockwave, followed by the actual shockwave a few minutes later, a deep rumbling crack-boom. He frowned in its direction.

 _What are they doing up there?_ He wondered.

Upon receiving word that one of the Bijuu Chosen was passing by he had sent half of his remaining personal guard along with the remnants of his elite jounin to intercept and find out if the Chosen was going to attack him if he continued his campaign against Konoha and if there was a way to conquer the village without having to fight any of the Bijuu, such as facing the Hokage in personal combat. He was not so arrogant as to think that he could withstand the combined might of the Nine.

When nothing else happened he returned his attention to his forces as they prepared to continue their advance towards Konoha after two weeks of immobility. The only reason he had let the sannin leave the field alive was because he had to deal with the other jounin that were tearing through his shinobi. Even then, thirty percent dead, with a further twenty percent crippled or wounded beyond the ability to heal in the field.

The first major engagement, and he had lost nearly half his forces. There were no reserves for him to call upon, there were barely enough shinobi in Ame to keep thieves and looters out of their homes. Granted, he had devastated Konoha’s veteran jounin forces, but another “victory” like that and Ame would cease to exist as a functional village. Hanzo was seriously considering calling for peace with Rain claiming the land he had already taken, but the moral of his shinobi, while low, had not yet broken, so they were continuing to push forward.

One more battle, he promised himself, one more demonstration of his power before he called for peace.

* * *

Three days later Hanzo was growing concerned. As he had half expected from the explosion, none of his men had returned from confronting the Chosen, but at the same time there had been no reports of said Chosen either. Given that things had quite obviously come to blows, Hanzo expected the Chosen to have either attacked him or fled to Konoha, but neither had happened. It was making him twitchy. He wanted something to happen just so that he could stop looking over his shoulder constantly.

Moments later Hanzo quietly groaned to himself for tempting fate as he felt the approaching killing intent of multiple Bijuu. He should have sued for peace when he had a chance. Turning to the captain of his guard he ordered

“Disperse the army and lead them back to Ame.”

“Hanzo-sama?” the man asked in shock.

“You can feel it as well as I. We cannot win this fight. Have the men disperse and make best speed to Ame. If I do not arrive within three days of your arrival, assume that I am dead and send a message of surrender to Konoha.”

“Surrender?” several of his guards hissed, shocked and no small amount angered.

“Yes. If I do not show, _surrender._ Without me Ame has no chance against Konoha. They threw more jounin at us in one fight than we have chuunin, and undoubtedly have still more in reserve.”

Feeling chakra begin to saturate the air, Hanzo became forceful.

“Go, now!”

After a long pause his guards reluctantly left him, calling out orders to the Ame ninja. Within seconds Hanzo stood alone on the dirt road as his army fled the approaching Bijuu. Despite their immense size there was only seconds between when Hanzo saw them in the distance, the fox, cat, ox, and bug, and them slamming to a halt in front of him, the four Chosen landing in front of their Bijuu, weapons ready. He had to admit, seeing something so large move so fast was quite intimidating.

“ **Arrogant of you to face us alone** , **Hanzo** ” the fox growled.

“My quarrel is Konoha, not the Chosen,” Hanzo replied.

 **“You have some nerve to say that,”** the Hachibi growled, “ **after having Son Goku and Sanehiko assassinated.”**

“I gave no such orders!” he denied.

 **“So a poisoned kunai accidentally found its way into Sanehiko’s back when he tried to eat dinner before he was beheaded from behind?”** buzzed the massive insect with mocking skepticism.

Hanzo’s eyes widened. He truly had given no such orders, in fact he had explicitly said that if the Chosen turned hostile his men were to retreat, and they were too loyal and intelligent to disobey him. A false flag, it had to be. He was being framed. Realization crashed through him. _Just as the Hokage had been insisting regarding the Leaf shinobi who tried to kill him._ It was still possible that those were actual Konoha shinobi of course, but his gut now said otherwise. How much of this war was this third party responsible for? Unfortunately, the Bijuu were no more likely to listen to him than he had been to the Hokage.

“I have one request,” he said.

 **“You dare make requests of us?”** the cat hissed.

“When the battle is over, please spare Ame. Your grievance is with me, not them. Please don’t turn Ame into the next Kiri.”

“If they surrender, no harm will come to them,” Namikaze promised, “You have my word.”

“Thank you.”

Drawing his sickle and spinning it on its chain, Hanzo, Leader of Amegakure, said

“Let’s make this a fight to remember, shall we?”

* * *

When the Ame army finally returned home, they found four Bijuu waiting for them, standing behind Ame’s walls, Hanzo’s corpse mounted above the main gatehouse and flanked by the four Chosen.

As per Hanzo’s final orders, they surrendered unconditionally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hashirama spent his entire time during the First Shinobi War trying to broker peace between the factions. Eventually, between the stress and his advancing age, his health collapsed. But rather than retire like everyone, including his brother and wife, urged him to, he kept trying to bring peace to the Elemental Countries. Eventually, his body failed outright.
> 
> In regards to the treaty, Konoha shinobi can only enter another nation when escorting a civilian trade/merchant caravan only, the single exception being when said shinobi are returning to Konoha once the mission is complete, and they are to do so at best speed.
> 
> Son Goku's first friend was Naruto, of course.
> 
> Yeah, Danzo overestimated Konoha's abilities a tad when he poked Hanzo, and then panicked a bit when only one in ten of Konoha most veteran and powerful ninja came back.


	7. Chapter 7

Uzumaki Settan sprinted through the trees of Fire Country, desperately trying to reach Konoha. He had to warn them and the Chosen about the coup. Ever since the Fall of Kiri there had been a vocal minority who advocated for capturing and resealing the Bijuu into Jinchuuriki that were under Uzushio’s control, but they could be and were safely ignored. Right up until they weren't, when they launched a coup with the assistance of an Uchiha that could only be Madara and a plant thing called Zetsu.

The coup had been damn near perfect too. By the time the Loyalists realized what was happening their most powerful shinobi, including the Kage, had already been assassinated and key locations, including the Experimental Vault, were already under the control of the Supremacists, who weren’t afraid of using said experiments on captured Loyalists as a demonstration and enslaving their dependents.

If anything was to be salvaged of Uzushio’s soul, Konoha had to be warned, had to retake Uzushio, free it from the grasp of power-hungry madmen. There were not enough Loyalists left to do it themselves.

A blank masked shinobi dropped out of the trees in front of Settan, causing him to come to an abrupt halt. Relief flooded him as he noticed the leaf symbol on the shinobi’s mask.

“Thank the kami,” Settan cried, “I need to get to the Hokage! There’s been a coup-“

A kunai slammed into Settan’s heart and he fell backwards, eyes wide with horror and betrayal.

Of the ten Loyalist Uzushio shinobi sent to warn Konoha, none arrived.

* * *

Namikaze Minato, the first ninja born to the Namikaze clan since Naruto-Jii-san, nervously took his seat in the front of the classroom, nearly ten minutes before the class was supposed to begin. Technically, he did not need to take this class, especially since he was still an academy student, but those who graduated from the “Path of the Fox” were well known as powerful, clever, and unpredictable, notorious for thinking sideways to normal human psychology.

If Minato was to live up to the standard of his distant ancestor, Namikaze Naruto, Kyuubi no Chosen, the man who singlehandedly dragged the Bijuu out of the pit humanity had cast them into and showed the world that they were not the monsters that everyone believed, then he needed every advantage and chance he could get.

Around him various genin, chuunin, tokubetsu jounin, and a (singular) jounin were taking their seats. Minato was, by far, the youngest person in the room, along with being the only non-ninja as well.

“You’re in the wrong room kid.”

Minato looked up at the chuunin looming over him.

“No, I’m not. I triple checked before entering.”

The chuunin snorted.

“This room is reserved for those taking the Path of the Fox. That means no _civilians_.”

“But I’m not a civilian,” Minato protested, “I’m an academy student. Look.”

He promptly henged into a copy of the chuunin and created a bushin.

“So you know two of the academy three. Big deal. You’re still nowhere near ready for this. Go back to your sensei, kid.”

“I know how to stick to and walk on anything with chakra and some combat jutsus as well. My sensei also signed off on me taking this class.”

“If you already know all that,” said the genin seated next to Minato, “Why haven’t you graduated yet?”

“I’m not ready. I mean, yes I could probably pass the tests right now, but there’s more to being a ninja than being able to repeat what your sensei told you and knowing a couple of jutsus.”

“Wise, young kit.”

Minato, along with most of the genin and some of the chuunin, jumped as Naruto-jii – no Naruto-sensei now – abruptly appeared behind the instructor’s desk, with Kurama-sama, in his usual form of a nine-tailed fox (as opposed to his kyuubi or one-tailed fox forms) the size of a small working dog, jumping up onto the desk and surveying everyone with an aloof gaze and regal pose. Minato found himself fascinated by the fur on the back of Naruto’s hands and around his neck, along with his naturally black lips and twitching pointed ears.

“Sensei,” the chuunin began, “This kid-“

“Is not your business,” Naruto interrupted with a warning tone, exposing a flash of fangs behind his black lips, “I suggest you find yourself a seat and stop worrying about those other than yourself.”

The chuunin flushed and slunk off. Naruto watched him go for a moment before turning his attention back to Minato.

“What’s your name, kit?”

“Namikaze Minato, sensei.”

Minato squirmed as he felt everyone’s gaze on him.

“Interesting,” was all Naruto said after a long moment of silence before turning to address the class.

“You all know what you’re here for, I will not bother rehashing what you already know. No doubt you have heard of the power and prestige of the graduates of this class. That prestige does not come from nothing, I will make you _earn_ that reputation. Some of you already know this, but for those of you that don’t, this class has an average wash-out rate of sixty-six percent. That means of the thirty-three of you, I expect eleven to make it to graduation, though I will be pleased if my expectations are surpassed.

“Some of you will give up. Some will be injured to the point that they cannot continue. Some will be unable to adapt their mentality. Some will have life get in the way. Some will simply fail. And, sadly, as with all elite training, some have died.

“I will not tolerate any abuse, physical, verbal, or otherwise, towards those who drop out. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sensei,” Minato said along with a handful of genin, chuunin, and jounin.

Naruto’s eyes narrowed.

“I said, _am I clear?”_

“YES, SENSEI!”

“Good,” Naruto grunted, and turned to the chalkboard.

“Foxes,” he said as he wrote on the board, “have to be cunning. They are both predator and prey, they must outwit both that which they eat, and that which would eat them. A slow fox, is a dead fox. In this, they are much akin to shinobi.”

Naruto looked over his shoulder at the class.

“Why?”

After a moment several people, including Minato, raised their hands.

“You,” Naruto pointed to someone out of Minato’s line of sight.

“It’s because we are stronger than civilians and lower ranked ninja, i.e. chuunin beat genin, jounin beat chuunin, while higher ranked ninja, like the kages, or beings like the Bijuu, are stronger than us.”

“Correct. Foxes prey on small rodents,” he wrote _civilians_ , “small mammals, like rabbits,” he wrote _bandits_ , “even other small predators,” _D/C rank nin_.

“Like tanukis,” Kurama interjected.

“Like tanukis,” Naruto acknowledged, writing _little brothers_.

Minato had to suppress his amusement, along with quite a few other people.

“Foxes are preyed on by wolves,” _A/S rank nin,_ “Tigers,” _kage_ , “bears,” _Bijuu_ , “even some birds,” _High level/boss summons_.

“In order to escape these predators, foxes use their small size, speed, and endurance by way of being able to fit through brush that larger animals cannot pass, fast enough to dodge into brush, and, combined with the shortcuts they can take, outlast their pursuers.”

Minato hear someone make a disgruntled noise in the back.

“What is it?” Naruto asked.

“Apologies, sensei, but what use is knowing this? It has no relation to shinobi.”

Both Naruto and Kurama grinned in a rather unnerving way, exposing their numerous fangs, causing several people to quietly groan or curse.

“I’m glad you asked,” Naruto said cheerfully, “I think it’s time for our first survival exercise. You are to meet me in the Chosen training grounds in four hours with a, or several, kills of animals found in or around Konoha. You will be scored comparatively, with the one with the most impressive kill or kills receiving max points. Pets and nin animals are forbidden to kill, of course.”

The class stared at Naruto because that sounded far too easy.

“…The catch?” someone reluctantly asked.

Naruto’s grin became disturbingly wide and he slapped the desk, causing numerous hidden seals to blaze to life and the world to distort…

Minato tumbled off his chair with a yip and landed on the floor with his limbs spread wide. Wait, a yip? Focusing he noticed something large and black between his eyes, connected with golden fuzz to where his nose should be, a yellow furred paw to either side of his head. Lifting his head and looking around showed that yes, everyone had been turned into foxes of various sizes, ages, and colorings.

Minato himself was a golden fox… kit. A pre-adolescent fox kit. All fluffy and tiny. A _ba-thump_ and scrabble of claws caused him to look back up at the now massive sensei desk, seeing a red fox with golden markings – that had to be Naruto – sitting next to an utterly unaffected Kurama.

“We’ll be generous this time and give you an hour before we start the exercise,” the Bijuu said magnanimously, sparking several growls and groans from around the room.

Staggering to his feet Minato joined his classmates in wandering around the room, learning how his new body responded, occasionally jumping up onto things. At one point, when jumping from desk to desk, he misjudged the distance and only his front paws and chest landed on the desk. Feeling himself start to slide off Minato panicked and reached for his chakra like he did when tree climbing – and it worked. His front paws stuck to the desk, and he was able to haul himself up.

Fifty minutes later, Kurama spoke up

“So now that you seem to have gotten the hang of things, I think it’s time to start the exercise. But this is too easy, isn’t it, so let’s make things a bit more difficult. First, if you manage to change back to human in any way other than myself or Naruto changing you, you automatically fail. Secondly,” Kurama’s grin became positively malevolent, “What’s a true exercise without an opposition force? _Oh, Inuzuka!_ ” he sang.

Everyone looked at him with a mix of dread and horror.

“ _Release the hounds!”_

There was a moment of silence, then the door slammed open and a dozen mostly grown ninken charged in, barking and howling and tails wagging hard enough to send chairs flying.

The room exploded into chaos even as Kurama cackled.

Minato leapt from desk to desk as each was shoved around as the ninken chased the foxes, using chakra to enhance his legs. After what could be seconds or minutes Minato leapt from desk to ninken back to the sensei’s desk, ducked between Naruto’s fore and hind paws, Minato’s back rubbing against Naruto’s belly, jumped, and bounced off of Kurama, using chakra to enhance his leap so that when he landed and stuck to the wall he was too high for the ninken to easily reach.

Glancing back Minato’s eyes widened, and he launched himself through the classroom’s false ceiling as Kurama’s jaws closed on where he had been, tearing out a small tuft of blonde fur from the tip of Minato’s tail. Landing on top of the ceiling tiles Minato took off running.

“ **Get back here brat!** ” Kurama roared as he exploded through the ceiling tiles after the little blonde fox kit, “ **I’ll teach you not to use me as a springboard!** ”

Minato ran even faster, legs fueled by chakra and pure existential terror. Ducking under and weaving between pipes, wires, and cables that the much larger Kyuubi no Kitsune had to go around, allowing Minato to stay just ahead of the outraged Bijuu. Eventually he spotted a vent duct, the gaps between the heavy bars large enough for him to fit, but too small for Kurama. Darting in, he felt the duct and thick anti-cut grate crumple as Kurama slammed into it.

“ **I’ll get you eventually,** ” Kurama growled as Minato continued to run through the duct system, paws clicking noisily on the metal.

Minutes later the golden kit found an external vent that he could slip through and he tumbled to the ground outside the academy building. For awhile he just lay there, panting, before the sound of ninken barking forced him to his paws and out into Konoha.

* * *

Naruto stood in the middle of his training grounds, having already returned to his mostly human form, along with twenty of his current crop of students, those having reverted upon being captured by the ninken, with an additional seven still as foxes with various kills in front of them, ranging from a rabbit to some mice, to a few large rats, but Naruto’s attention wasn’t on his students currently.

Namikaze Minato… he knew that name, but he couldn’t remember from where. The name was clearly familiar, yet he couldn’t place it. It was slowly driving him nuts.  Despite paying nominal attention to his students, enough to raise his eyebrows as the jounin who had signed up wandered into the battle-scarred clearing with a mouse impaled on each fang – how did he even manage that? – most of his mind was occupied sorting though older and older memories, trying to find where he had heard that name before.

Eventually he came across a memory from Before, an image of the Hokage Monument, and the confusion cleared. Minato had become the Yondaime Hokage. How could he have forgotten that? Hearing several gasps and impressed murmurs, Naruto looked up to see Minato, bloodstained and limping, trembling with exhaustion, both chakra and physical, stagger in, dragging a feral cat, itself easily as large as any of the adult foxes and thus three times Minato’s size and easily ten times his weight. For any of the actual ninja to have brought that in on their first time would have impressed Naruto, but seeing Minato, in his tiny golden fluff of a body, dragging the dead cat in by the scruff even as his fur was stained by the blood of both of them, well. He certainly got first place.

Even if Minato didn’t make Hokage this time around, Naruto was certain that the kit would be going places.

* * *

Hiruzen looked up as someone knocked on his office door.

“Come in.”

Danzo entered, looking grim.

“We have a situation.”

The Hokage stilled, giving his old friend his undivided attention.

“What happened.”

“Uzushio just sent word. A coup is about to take place, one that is decidedly hostile to Konoha’s aims. They’re requesting Namikaze and the Kyuubi to help them. The message came to me personally, the normal communication channels are compromised.”

Hiruzen scowled and pulled out his pipe to puff on for a bit.

“How much time do we have?”

“Very little. The message implied that the coup was imminent.”

He nodded slowly.

“Very well. Monkey-san, I need to see Naruto immediately.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some things it is inadvisable to bounce up and down on. Things like rickety stairs, narrow ledges, rusted catwalks, nitroglycerin, and your local "friendly" Bijuu.


	8. Chapter 8

Naruto stepped off the small, fast ship onto Uzushio’s docks, wearing a henge that had a distinct resemblance to Sarutobi Asuma, to the point that one might mistake him to be Asuma’s brother. Kurama was watching the world through Naruto’s senses from where he was curled around Naruto’s soul, both guarded by a seal that was far more powerful than the one that had bonded them, for once entirely within the seal, having dispersed his avatar long before either set foot on the boat. Glancing around at how Uzushio’s inhabitants darted around in a pervasive aura of fear Naruto frowned.

 _Tell Isobu and Gyuuki stand ready, I don’t like this,_ he thought to Kurama, who briefly turned his attention inward to contact his siblings.

 ** _…Done. Actually, should they depart now? At Isobu’s full speed it’ll take them several hours to reach us from Wave,_** the fox responded.

_Not yet. Not without more information. We don’t know for certain that the coup has happened yet._

Kurama broadcasted his skepticism and felt Naruto’s quiet agreement. The whole city was rank with fear and desperation. While no fighting was ongoing, if the coup hadn’t happened yet the time until it did could probably be measured in hours. But without knowing who the major players were charging in would hurt far more than the additional forces would help. Which was why they were meeting with a contact Hiruzen had given them.

**_I still think that you shouldn’t have brought your class along._ **

_They’re all ninja, having them evacuate civilians and VIPs while we six and the jounin tear apart the front line will be good experience for them._

**_Minato is ten. And an academy student._ **

_…Oh. Oops._

**_Oops. You forgot._ **

_His skill level is easily high genin to low chunin. He’ll be fine._

Kurama sighed in exasperation.

**_Just… don’t start anything for a few days. Shukaku is three days out, Chomei and Saiken are four._ **

_You… want to wait for reinforcements? Kurama are you feeling alright?_

**_Naruto, we are in_ Uzushio _. I’ve sparred with you and Mito enough to know that a handful of Uzumaki with their chakra chains would be enough to keep even me occupied, and if there are any who could figure out how to break the seal, or even_ burn it out _, it would be the Uzushio Seal Masters. We_ will _be facing traitorous Uzumaki. My pride is second to your life, Naruto. I won’t risk it._**

Kurama felt a rush of _embarrassed-surprise-love_ from Naruto and returned _determination-exasperation-affection_.

When he had agreed to bond with Naruto, (and his only regret was that it didn’t happen sooner) he had no idea just how intimate the bond could become, or how much more so it became once Naruto collaborated with Mito.

Not even Kurama could determine where his soul ended and Naruto’s began now, a brilliant blue speck, shinning with the light of the sun, embraced on all sides by a sea of bloody crimson, devoutly guarding the oh-so-precious spark from the violence of the world. When the Shinigami came for Naruto, he would find Kurama standing in his way.

The more Naruto wandered through Uzushio the more and deeper the fear the pair could taste from the village, along with finding locations that had once shown something that had now been removed. Said locations were also suspiciously clean, glaringly standing out against the, not filthy, but… used, worn surrounding cobbles, stone, and brick.

**_This is a trap._ **

Naruto didn’t respond verbally, but Kurama could feel his wariness.

It took him several hours to find the correct building, a non-descript warehouse not far from Uzushio’s Administration Center, their version of Konoha's Hokage' Tower. Knocking on the door, Naruto gave the code phrase to the masked nin that appeared.

“Nine of nine is eighteen.”

The shinobi nodded and beckoned him in, closing and locking the door behind Naruto. The warehouse was dark and dusty, with beams of sunlight filtering through fogged panes high above into a surprisingly open space. As the ninja disappeared into the depths Naruto wandered forward, looking around. Then came a surge of malice, greed, and vicious satisfaction. Eyes wide, Naruto dove for his weapons even as a massive seal hidden beneath the dust and dirt of the floor blazed to life.

* * *

Uzumaki Kushina, once niece to Uzushio’s kage, had had a bad few weeks. No, that was an understatement, it had been a disastrous few weeks.

When assassins came for her parents, they had hid her and activated a fuuinjutsu clone of her – identical even to the point of bleeding and death. Unfortunately, there had not been time for her parents to substitute themselves as well, but the clone did its job. No one knew she still lived, and as long as the paper seal talisman around her neck remained intact, the fuuinjutsu henge over her could not be easily dispelled, allowing her to move around Uzushio unnoticed.

She’d cried for the first week, along with far, far too many others. Once her grief faded enough for her anger at the traitors to make her functional, Kushina went looking for her friends. Not one had been found alive, but several of their parent’s corpses had been on display.

That had been the point where she had set aside her grief in favor of extracting her revenge on the traitors, or die trying.

Kushina was aware enough to realize that a head-on attack by a ten-year-old with only a few years at the academy and few jutsus would only end in her death, so instead she waited. Watched.

Eight days later, one of the warehouses exploded with unimaginably immense chakra, a brilliant beacon that drowned out all other signatures near it, guzzling power from the defensive barriers and seals that protected Uzushio from attack.

Something that Kushina had learned during her many pranking attempts on annoying family members and general assholes was that high level shinobi, even those who were not trained as sensors, tended to rely on chakra sensing for close to medium range detection, which mean that if Kushina could get close enough without being spotted visually it was unlikely she’d be detected, her signature drowned out by the chakra being thrown everywhere. She also knew that there was a half-collapsed tunnel leading into that particular warehouse, having used it to escape from irate prank victims before. Adults were too big to fit through it, but she could manage just fine.

It took an hour to reach the other end of the tunnel near the outskirts of the village, and another two to crawl through it. Crouching beneath the trapdoor, hidden by a still active seal that likely dated back to the founding of the village, Kushina took a moment to listen for anyone standing on the other side. She heard nothing. Cracking it, she discovered that the small dark corner the passage opened into had been buried behind empty shelves, shielding it from sight.

Shimmying out to under the shelves, Kushina carefully closed the trapdoor so that it made minimal sound. This close to the source of the chakra it was starting to get difficult to breathe, the air felt like it was slowly turning to molasses from the sheer quantity. But if disrupting whatever was happening here hurt the bastards that killed her family, then by the Kami she would wreck the place.

Silently slipping between and under shelves she made her way towards the crimson glow that illuminated the warehouse. Several high stress minutes later, she laid eyes on it.

A large seal, easily six meters across, contained a swirling crimson vortex. Around it stood the five elders who led the coup, and elderly man Kushina had never seen before with a seal painted on his abdomen, and a humanoid shadow.

“We should have tried to break the seal rather than breach it. This is taking too long,” The unknown man complained.

“We’ve gone over this before, Madara, Mito is one of our best seal masters and she has stated in her letters that the seal is designed to prevent extraction. Breaking that could take days to weeks. Faster to just overpower it,” One of the elders responded tiredly.

“We’ve spent ten times more chakra than even most Uzumaki have, and the seal hasn’t broken,” Madara retorted.

“This entire conversation is academic," A different elder said, looking up from where he was monitoring the red and lightly smoking seal in the warehouse floor, "The extraction seal is under far too much stress to be modified without failing. A lesser seal would have already failed explosively, even a single flaw in this one would have caused it to break. Somehow the Chosen's seal is fighting back.”

“I didn’t think that was possible,” The living shadow said, mildly surprised.

“Neither did I, but it’s _doing_ _it_ , so…”

“Could it be the Bijuu?” asked the first elder.

“Can’t be. The Chosen's seal went into lockdown the moment we began extraction, it may be able to perceive the world through the bastard’s senses but it cannot do anything.”

Kushina stopped paying attention as she padded backwards and began to circle the group. Admittedly she didn’t know enough about seals to understand what they were talking about, but she understood enough. The seal was important to the Usurpers’ cause, and currently fragile. Breaking it would hurt them a lot. A chakra chain manifested around her right forearm.

Kushina was good at breaking things.

Reaching the wall of the warehouse Kushina took a breath then lunged out of the shadows, chain snapping out towards the seal on the ground. A wind jutsu promptly smashed her back against some shelves, toppling them.

“You little brat!” Madara roared.

The vortex within the seal flickered, revealing a charred and smoking figure, crimson seal burning bright across its entire torso, and everyone’s eyes went to the single slash mark in the intricate sealing array left by Kushina’s chain.

A brief pause that lasted far shorter than it felt, and the seal failed in an enormous crimson detonation, slamming Kushina through the shelves and into the warehouse wall, breaking her right arm and leg on impact.

There was a deep roar of rage, a surge of immense chakra, and killing intent so potent that it stole her breath. Screams and the sound of the building breaking. As darkness closed in on her vision and the warehouse ceiling collapsed towards her, a single thought went through Uzumaki Kushina’s head

_Vengeance is mine._

* * *

Minato looked at Uzushio from where he stood on Isobu’s shell with half of Konoha’s strike force half a kilometer away from the barrier that cut the entire island Uzushio was built on off from the world. It was a truly stunning work of fuuinjutsu, but right now it was making things difficult. His role had already been decided – evacuate surviving VIPs and wounded shinobi, but everyone else was debating strategies, much to Gyuuki’s and even Isobu’s impatience.

Everyone fell silent when Kurama abruptly exploded from within a building near the acropolis, shortly followed by an equally large dark blue Perfect Susano’o that instantly struck at the Bijuu with a drawing slash from its chakra sword, forcing Kurama to leap backwards, landing outside of the village, altering his hips and spine to allow bipedal stance as he did so. As the Susano’o leapt after him, Kurama formed a bijuudama, then _grabbed it and drew it out into a blade_ , chakra so compressed its shade of red was not far off of black forming the handle.

Bijuu and Susano’o traded several blows, then Kurama fell with a grievous slash across his torso, deep enough to be lethal to a human. The great fox had barely hit the dirt before he was rolling to his paws, the wound rapidly healing without a scar, and snarling at the Susano’o, whose sword was now missing chunks where it had come into contact with the bijuu-blade.

 **“We’re going in,”** Isobu stated as both he and Gyuuki charged bijuudama.

Minato clung to the giant shell with chakra as the Bijuu fired. Both bijuudama hit Uzushio’s barrier near enough simultaneously within a dozen meters of each other. There was a single breathless moment where the bijuudama clashed with the barrier, and then, with a series of explosions along the shoreline, the barrier fell, the bijuudama whizzing over the village to eventually detonate in the sea on the other side of the island.

 **“Kurama said that it was a third party that broke the seal containing him. He is uncertain if they survived,”** Isobu rumbled as he strode towards Uzushio, covering the distance even faster than most jounin could run.

“I’ll find them, Isobu-sama,” Minato volunteered, “Does Kurama-sama have a description?”

**“Child with long red hair and can wield chakra chains. He didn’t get much of a look.”**

“Long red hair and chakra chains, got it.”

Watching as the jounin and Tokubetsu jounin jumped off of Isobu and into battle, Minato hesitated before going through the hand seals for the Shapeshift Jutsu. Unlike the henge, which only made you _appear_ as something or someone else, shapeshifting _physically_ transformed the body, which made it a kinjutsu by default. Naruto had developed the technique from a prank jutsu he created in his early years for, quote, “use against perverts”. The main catch was that the caster did not gain immediate knowledge of how to move in the altered form and if they transformed into a form without hands they had to cast the reversion without hand seals, or have a companion revert them. The main benefit was that the disguise was perfect, even against the byakugan, though experienced sharingan wielders could catch the chakra irregularities. Naruto only ever taught it to the Chosen and a select few who underwent the Path of the Fox.

Minato was the youngest ever to master reversion without hand seals.

Unlike the henge’s poof of smoke, Minato’s form melted into a large (adult) golden fox. With a running start he leapt from Isobu’s back, landing lightly on Uzushio’s docks, dodged an errant fireball, and started running towards where Kurama had first appeared.

* * *

Kushina woke up. Woke up to burning pain all along her right side and two broken limbs, but she was mildly surprised to have woken up at all. Several major wood beams had fallen such that they created a triangular cavity against the warehouse wall. Combined with much of the roof having been blown outwards rather than collapsed inwards meant that she could see the sky through some of the larger gaps near the top. While some of the gaps looked large enough that she might be able to squeeze through, her broken bones precluded her from even reaching them.

The dust in the air from the shattered stonework caused her to cough, which turned into a muffled scream as her spasming ribs jostled her broken arm. When the haze of pain receded Kushina became aware of the sound of claws on stone, clicking on top of the rubble looming over her.

“Hello?” she weakly called.

There was a pause and then a dusty golden fox poked its’ head through one of the gaps in the rubble. Kushina stared in confusion. She knew that there were no foxes on Uzushio, so where did it come from? The fox jumped down near her, frowned in concentration, and then _flowed into human form._ Kushina startled, but between the pain of her suddenly shifted broken limbs and the ninja’s quick dodge the chakra chain she instinctively lashed out with missed him, though barely.

“Hey!”, the ninja cried indignantly, “Don’t kill me, I’m trying to help you!”

Kushina belatedly noticed the Konoha hitai-ate on the blonde boy’s forehead.

“Sorry,” she moaned, gritting her teeth against the pain.

The ninja peered at her arm and leg before pulling out a scroll and unsealing several splints.

“My name’s Minato,” he said.

“Kushina. How did you know where to find me?”

“Kurama-sama sent me.”

“Who?”

Minato paused as he laid the splints next to her broken limbs.

“The Bijuu? The Kyuubi no Kitsune?”

Seeing Kushina’s confusion he tried again

“The guy you freed from the seal?”

“That was the Kyuubi?” she asked incredulously.

“Actually, that was Naruto-sensei. Kurama-sama lives in him, though he usually projects himself outside of Naruto-sensei.”

Kushina stared at the blonde, opened her mouth to say something, and the ground lurched. Her cry of pain was drowned out by the roar of something massive collapsing. Pebbles rained down on the two and a section of the pocket collapsed as the debris shifted.

“We need to move,” Minato stated hurriedly, “This will hurt.”

Having finished setting up he began to splint Kushina’s limbs.

He was right, it hurt.

When Kushina was able to perceive more than pain she found Minato surveying the pile of rubble. Noticing that she was aware he asked

“Know any jutsus that might be able to clear a path?”

“None that I can cast with only one hand.”

He nodded, frowning, before turning back and grabbing her unbroken arm.

“You’ll have to hold on tight.”

She gritted her teeth against the pain as he hauled her onto his back, wrapping her arm and leg around him as best she could as he began to go through hand seals.

“ _Fuuton: Daitoppa!”_

The rubble exploded outwards and Minato _shunshined_ -

The sudden pain caused Kushina to pass out.

* * *

Minato stared down at his unconscious charge, listening to the sound of jutsus, battle, and screams. Clearly, carrying her was not going to work, a large part of the battle – centered around Gyuuki – was directly between them and the bluff that had been designated as the evac point before the battle began. If he was to get through that he needed to be fast and/or have his hands free to cast jutsus.

Carrying her in his arms wouldn’t work. Aside from preventing him from using hand seals he really didn’t want to stress her broken leg like that. Shoulder wouldn’t work either – his were still too slight, he couldn’t balance her on them.

After several minutes a thought occurred. He could stick to things with chakra, was the reverse true? A quick test with his forearm confirmed that yes, he could stick her to himself. Perhaps stick her to his back? No, no that wouldn’t work. They were roughly the same size, doing that would cause her broken leg to repeatedly hit the ground. Though if he made himself bigger… but the few times he shapeshifted into an adult human form he kept tripping over himself, and the only non-human form he knew well enough to use in battle was the fox. Maybe keep the proportions the same but scale up?

A building collapsed to a massive explosion concerningly close.

…Giant fox it was.

Pulling out his first aid scroll again he bound another three splints to both her arm and leg, then began to concentrate, running though the hand seals while clearly picturing his form in his mind. The world twisted in a familiar fashion and he was once again a golden fox, only this time he was two meters tall at the shoulder.

Gently gripping Kushina with his jaws, Minato slung her over his back, using chakra to stick her there, and took off, using chakra to enhance his speed to the point where, thanks to his increased stride, few jounin could catch him.

Minato had managed to circle Gyuuki’s fight and was nearly to the field hospital that Tsunade had set up when the ground shook violently. He dropped to his belly to keep from falling over as the buildings next to him collapsed. It went on for nearly a minute before abating. The shaking had barely stopped when Isobu bellowed

**“Tsunami!”**

Eyes wide Minato leapt up onto the tallest pile of rubble nearby and looked back over the now destroyed village. He watched as the two Bijuu diverted the giant wave around Konoha and loyal Uzushio shinobi, washing away enemy forces. As water roared down the street below Minato looked around to see what could have caused the tsunami.

It didn’t take long to find.

The northern quarter of the island was simply _gone_ , save for a pillar of dust, and much of the rest of the island had massive cracks radiating through it. A large chunk of the bluff the field hospital had been set up on had collapsed into the sea as well, thankfully stopping short of taking anybody with it, and he could see the various medic-nin rapidly relocating it further inland. As the dust cloud dispersed, he caught sight of Kurama standing in the new bay, bijuu-blade still in hand. Of the Susano’o there was no sign.

Averting his gaze from the battle Minato set off towards the hospital, using chakra to leap from rubble pile to rubble pile so as to not get swept away by the raging water. There was no longer any sound of fighting, which made him think that the battle was over, but he couldn’t help but feel like they had failed.

They had come to save Uzushio, but had destroyed it instead, and given the level of damage to the island Minato didn’t think that it could be rebuilt.

* * *

Kurama, in his fox form, sat next to the futon that Naruto lay on, thoroughly unconscious with chakra exhaustion, eyes fixed on his radically mutated face as Tsunade scanned him with medical jutsus. His chosen could no longer pass as human.

Naruto’s face was now that of a red fox, with a blonde patch in front of and between his ears. His legs had altered to digitigrade, and ended in large paws. His palms and fingertips had also grown thick black pads. And finally, there was a long bushy fox tail sprouting from the base of his spine.

Tsunade sighed as she released the diagnostic jutsu.

“Well?” Kurama asked.

“He’s fine, as far as I can tell, aside from the chakra exhaustion. Speaking of which, your chakra levels are worryingly low as well. You need to rest Kurama-san.”

“Soon,” he promised tiredly, “Soon. Did Minato rescue whomever it was that freed us? I owe them Naruto’s life.”

Tsunade looked at him in confusion.

“I thought you said the seal was holding?”

“The seal was. Naruto’s body was not. Hence…” he nodded at his extremely altered precious person, “Anyway, the kit?”

She sighed.

“Uzumaki Kushina. Near as we can tell, except for Mito-san, she’s the last of the Uzumaki main line. Madara and his co-conspirators were quite thorough in eliminating those who wouldn’t support them, and the Uzumaki who sided with him are all confirmed killed. Broken arm, broken leg, cracked ribs, minor internal hemorrhaging. We’re keeping her sedated until we reach Wave, you can meet her then. _Sleep_ , Kurama-san. You need it.”

“One last question. Did anyone recover Madara’s body?”

“…No.”

“He survived then.”

“And if he comes back you won’t be much of a threat if you don’t rest!”

“Fine, fine,” the fox grumbled, rolling his eyes, “Infuriating vixen.”

But he obligingly dispelled his avatar, returning his consciousness to the seal, curled a little tighter around Naruto’s oh-so-fragile soul, and stopped fighting to stay awake. Tsunade shook her head in exasperation, but quietly left the tent to see to her next patient.

No one noticed Orochimaru slip into the tent and take the vial of blood that Tsunade had drawn but, thanks to his genjutsu, had forgotten to dispose of.

* * *

Danzo quietly read the report one of his ROOT had handed him. The strike force Konoha had dispatched had suffered nearly thirty percent casualties, most from the tsunami caused by a significant chunk of the island falling into the sea. Of the Uzushio survivors there were fifty-seven civilians and thirty-two ninja, fourteen of which were related to the Uzumaki within three generations. Even if Uzushio was rebuilt – which may be possible due to the three Bijuu on site – that was far too few shinobi left to defend the village against bandits or pirates, and they knew it.

Which was why the survivors were moving to Konoha, and bringing with them Uzushio’s remaining repositories of knowledge.

Danzo leaned back in his chair in satisfaction, a vicious smile briefly gracing his lips. When the members of the coup had approached him, he had known immediately that their plan was doomed to failure. For someone who’s stated goal was to bind the Bijuu to his will, Madara knew amusingly little about his quarry.

Still, Uzushio had been getting too close to parity with the other three great nations for his comfort, and as such he happily gave them all the rope they needed to hang themselves. That he had needed to eliminate several runners was annoying, but little else.

He had expected Uzushio to have been humbled by the fighting, taking decades to centuries to recover, but this? Uzushio destroyed and the survivors strengthening Konoha? This was success far beyond what he had hoped for.

The only disappointment was that Madara had survived. In this he agreed with the faithless Chosen. Even if there had been a body, he would have had it watched closely. There was a suspicion that Izangi, if used before death, could restore someone to life.

But when Madara emerged from the rock he crawled under, Konoha would remove the stain on their honor. Unlike his weak and sentimental friend who wore the hat, Danzo would make certain of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit longer than my normal chapters, but I couldn't justify breaking it in two.
> 
> Bijuu tend to be a bit hard on the scenery, shall we say.
> 
> Also, next update might take awhile. My cat, whom I've known since I was 5, died late on the 2nd. Extremely anti-biotic resistant super bug. She was 18 years old.


	9. Chapter 9

A the Third scowled at the increasing pile of reports covering his desk. While he was grateful for the Nibi, no for _Matatabi_ , running up the length of Lighting’s coastline warning about the tsunami the fighting in Uzushio had caused, thereby saving thousands to tens of thousands of lives, the fact remained that all of the fishing and naval industry along the east coast had been destroyed. Still, it could have been worse. Early reports indicated that Water Country had lost between a fifth and a quarter of their population, though Kiri’s walls had withstood the wave and were undamaged.

Annoyingly, the Daimyo had been inspired by the chakra construction techniques used by Konoha ninja and was diverting his ninja for reconstruction. A couldn’t complain too loudly though, the pay was good, there was little danger, and it allowed them to harden the coastline against the Kiri raids that would start in a few months, once their fleet was once again rebuilt.

With the mass destruction of fishing industry throughout the archipelago Water would shortly be running a significant food deficit, which meant that they would have to start raiding or starve. He wasn’t completely heartless towards the plight of Water, he would happily trade with them, but Kiri was known as pirate central for a reason. They wouldn’t trade for anything they could simply take.

Of Kiri’s potential raiding targets, Wave and Forests were both vassals of Fire, and attacking either of them or Fire itself was just asking to be flattened by Konoha. Frost was too heavily fortified to justify the casualties, and Hot Water had rapid reaction forces along their coastlines, which meant that any delay could turn into a pitched battle. Very risky for medium reward. That left Lightning and Tea as the only viable raiding targets, and while Tea was very rich for a minor nation it didn’t have much in the way of excess food stores due to the extensive jungles.

Unfortunately, Kiri was a distraction Kumo did _not_ need right now. Iwa was establishing forward supply bases along its southern border, Suna was mobilizing in response, and Frost, Hot Water, Sound, and Snow had declared an alliance with Snow building a worryingly large fleet and forces of Hot Water and Sound ninja being spotted in Frost.

Put simply, A could see a Third Shinobi War on the horizon, and Lightning had just been weakened. Not significantly, but the damage would take years to recover from. He felt they had months. A knock on the door drew his attention.

“Enter.”

Eiji, his head of intelligence, entered and bowed before his desk, placing several folders before him.

“Raikage-sama. Intelligence reports from Konoha and the team dispatched to Uzushio, as well as the proposed updates to the Bingo Book.”

“Thank you. Dismissed.”

Picking up the first folder, labeled Uzushio, he flipped through it, scanning. Extensive structural damage, significant soil loss, mass plant death due to chakra poisoning, further large collapses likely with five years. Nothing he didn’t expect. At least they could drop another chunk into the sea if they need to take out Kiri’s fleet in the upcoming war and didn’t mind the collateral. Though that might get a very annoyed Hokage knocking on his door, so that would be a last resort.

The second folder was the one A was truly interested in; the Bingo Book updates. Because Konoha didn’t tend to find itself in major battles, information on their sub S-class nin tended to be sparse, and even the S-ranks were far fewer than what Konoha’s population said should be. Everyone was in agreement that they _existed_ , but even Suna, the smallest of the great nations, had more A-ranks in the Bingo Books than all of Konoha’s shinobi combined.

Given that the Betrayal of Uzushio, as it was becoming known, was the first major action Konoha had fought since the Rain Invasion – and that had been resolved by the Bijuu after Hanzo assassinated one of the Chosen – everyone with a major intelligence force was scrambling to investigate the village ruins and have their spies/informants in Konoha find which nin had distinguished themselves.

Flipping it open he began to read the sub to low A-rank additions, which only had a rank, a description, and a quick blurb, not being important enough, or well known enough, to justify their own page. A raised his eyebrow at the sheer number, Hiruzen wasn’t even trying to suppress information about the battle, was he? Fair enough, he could see the logic. Then his eyes fell on a particular entry and both eyebrows went to his hairline.

_Namikaze Minato. Threat Rank: B. Official Rank: Acad. Stud._

_Description: Average height, golden hair, blue eyes. 10 years as of Betrayal of Uzushio._

_Notes: Was selected by Namikaze Naruto to join force to Uzushio despite still being an academy student. Successfully recovered badly injured VIP from behind enemy lines by turning self into fox, of normal size to reach target and later giant to carry VIP. Extremely intelligent, prodigy, somewhat socially inept. Possible future apprentice/successor of Kyuubi no Chosen._

A personally felt that a B-rank was a bit high for a ten-year-old, especially one that was not yet a commissioned ninja, but he didn’t doubt that this Minato would quickly earn the rank in truth in a year or two, and the personal attention of Namikaze Naruto more than justified it anyway. Grabbing a pen, he circled the entry and wrote:

_Priority watch. Investigate blood link to N.N., may be lead on N.N.’s past._

Namikaze Minato may be small fry right now, but he was certain to be a terror later.

Flipping to the first of the full-page updates A startled slightly at the image bust of a red fox’s head on human shoulders. After a moment he turned to the accompanying text.

* * *

_Namikaze Naruto; Kyuubi no Chosen_

_Birthplace: Unknown; Allegiance: Bijuu, Konoha; Age: 180+, exact age unknown_

_Official Rank: Chosen of the Bijuu. Threat Rank: SS-class. Flee on sight, no exceptions._

_Reward: None._

_Description: Due to his Chosen’s seal lacking “Mutagenic limiters”, has mutated into an anthropomorphic red fox, with vulpine face, legs, and tail and furred but humanoid torso and arms._

_Kekkei Genkai: None_

_Tactical Notes: A highly intelligent and extremely unpredictable powerhouse Namikaze tends to open most fights with mass Shadow Clones, reportedly being able to summon hundreds simultaneously. While he is able to cast all types of elemental jutsus, his two strongest non-Chosen jutsus are the Rasengan and Rasenshuriken, best described as watered down bijuudama with the latter also being wind natured. If Namikaze starts using Chosen abilities – chakra cloak, bijuudama, bijuu-blade, etc. – or Kurama no Kyuubi takes to the field the battle, flight must be prioritized and any ongoing mission is to be considered forfeit. If retreat is not possible, Namikaze is usually willing to accept surrenders._

_History: First appeared at Konoha’s gates with eight other Chosen. Despite claiming to have founded a now destroyed clan and village, no information has ever been found even hinting of their existence. Since arriving at Konoha he rarely travels more than several kilometers from the Village, notable exceptions being the Fall of Kiri, Rain Invasion, and Betrayal of Uzushio. Since the Rain Invasion he has been teaching a course to Konoha nin called “Path of the Fox”, which usually elevates nin who successfully complete the course to A-rank threats._

_Personality: Nearly perpetually cheerful and quite mischievous, he is extremely fond of pranks, even using them on his students in lessons to “support their situational awareness”._

_Notable actions and kills:_

_Fall of Kirigakure – involved in the death of the Seven Swordsmen, crippling of the Mizukage, and destruction of the village._

_Rain Invasion – After the assassination of Sanehiko no Yonbi, Namikaze took to the field against Hanzo with the other Chosen and killed him._

_Betrayal of Uzushio – Was captured by rebelling Uzushio nin and Uchiha Madara, who attempted to extract the Kyuubi from him. Escaped and fought Madara’s Perfect Susano’o, eventually winning but breaking the island and causing a tsunami that devastated much of the continental coastline and eastern islands._

* * *

Minato sighed lightly as he slipped into his usual seat at the front of the class. The past several days had been… stressful. He had known that going to Uzushio would draw attention, but not that it would draw interest from what felt like all the other countries. They were being somewhat discreet at least, his parents certainly hadn’t noticed their presence, and wasn’t that a whole different pain on its own. He… may not have been totally honest with his parents about heading to Uzushio. Technically, it _was_ a “long-duration excursion exercise”, like the ones Naruto-sensei semi-regularly took his class on, in the same manner as – as his father put it – calling one of the wars a “minor pissing contest”.

He had managed to keep from being completely grounded by claiming that as the one to rescue Uzumaki Kushina, it was his responsibility to show her around Konoha, which was true in the sense that he felt responsible for Konoha destroying her home – even though he didn’t actually fight anybody – but Minato hadn’t managed to get his position officially until nearly a week afterward.

It helps that he genuinely likes Kushina, at least when she isn’t trying to convince the world that what happened to her wasn’t horrible and that she isn’t weak. Minato wasn’t sure where Kushina had gotten the idea that she was weak from, she had faced down _Madara_ and his conspirators, successfully freeing Naruto-sensei and Kurama-sama, and while they had hurt her badly, she was _ten_. Minato didn’t understand why pointing that out had only angered her though. She had been spending a lot of time with Uzumaki Mito and in the Namikaze compound, even Kurama-sama had repeatedly sought her out, prompting rumors that he was scouting her as a potential successor to Naruto-sensei as the Kyuubi no Chosen.

The opening of the classroom door brought Minato out of his thoughts and the class stared in confusion as an old man with a heavily wrinkled face, pure white hair, and garbed in worn civilian clothes hobbled in on a cane .

“Good morning class,” the man beamed, “It’s good to see everyone so eager to learn about farming wheat.”

What?

Minato peered at the man suspiciously – Naruto-sensei liked to disguise lessons with pranks – but there were absolutely no tells that the man was their sensei in disguise, no fur, no claws, brown eyes with a normal pupil, not even a whisker tattoo.

“Kai!” several people shouted as the sole Hyuuga and Uchiha in the room activated their doujutsu.

“Not a henge,” the Hyuuga reported.

“Chakra levels are normal for a civilian as well,” the Uchiha agreed.

“Apologies, Elder-san, but I don’t think you’re in the right room,” a chuunin said.

The old man looked affronted.

“Come now, Toin-chan, I’ve been teaching all of you for months,” the man pivoted and meandered towards the chalkboard, “I believe we left off last week with crop rotation…”

“Very funny Naruto-sensei.”

The old man paused looking at the door before glancing over the classroom.

“Toin-chan are you feeling alright? My name’s Menma, not Naruto. You know this.”

Minato frowned in thought, looking at his fellow classmates, who were doing the same- the jounin – or completely baffled – everyone else. He stared at the Menma’s back for nearly a minute, ignoring what the man was saying and writing on the board, before quietly slipping out of his seat and shapeshifting into his preferred form of a fox. Sniffing the air, he tried to isolate the man’s scent. It definitely wasn’t Naruto’s, but it was noticeably close, so much so that he probable would have said that they were closely related if he didn’t know better. Specifically, the main difference was the _species_ markers. He reverted to human form.

“Anything?” the tokujo next to him asked.

“Maybe,” Minato replied, “I’m going to try something.”

Quietly approaching Menma from behind, he went through the hand seals for Shapeshift Reversion.

When Menma began to melt into Naruto-sensei’s fox-human form there was a chorus of groans, facepalms, and at least two people thumping their heads onto their desks. Naruto pivoted to look at Minato, a grin on his lips.

“What gave me away?”

“Scent.”

“I changed it.”

“You changed your _species_ , not your unique identifiers.”

Naruto smiled, which looked decidedly odd on a muzzle.

“Your nose is starting to get as good as an Inuzuka’s. Well done.”

Naruto’s ears twitched as someone muttered something. He laughed.

“I thought about it. But no matter how tempting, ‘ramen farming’ was probably too much of a hint.”

That got a wave of chuckles.

“Let that be a lesson, especially to those who have, or with teammates who have, doujutsus. They can be spoofed…”

Naruto trailed off staring at the Hyuuga.

“Samba-chan could you please remove your headband?”

Minato twisted around to see the Hyuuga slowly removing his headband to reveal, judging from Naruto-sensei’s rapidly growing anger, what was definitely not a tattoo.

“Samba-chan, _who did that to you?”_

Samba swallowed nervously as Minato quickly scooted away from Naruto as chakra started to press on his lungs.

“The Hyuuga Main Branch Elders, Naruto-sensei. They said that it would keep my eyes from being stolen.”

“They lied,” Naruto snarled.

“ _That’s a slave seal.”_

* * *

Hiruzen rubbed his forehead as he stared at the two groups in front of his desk. On one side stood Naruto and Kurama, both angry enough that their chakra was pressing on the air, which was very disconcerting given how hard it normally was to rile them up, and on the other was Hirotaka Hyuuga, the current clan head, flanked by two branch members with the Caged Bird Seal on display, equally outraged.

“…as such we developed a seal that would prevent the theft of our eyes. Any side effects are coincidental,” Hirotaka finish.

“Coincidental,” Naruto said flatly.

He made a hand seal and both branch members fell to the floor, clutching their eyes and screaming in pain.

“Naruto!” Hiruzen barked, but Naruto had already released the pair.

“You don’t accidentally make something that can do that,” the fox-human spat, fangs bared, “You have to build it in from the start, _kin-slaver_.”

Hirotaka glared.

“Regardless of your _opinions_ on the seal, _Chosen_ , this is Hyuuga Clan business, and as such outside of the purview of the Hokage, much less someone who lives here at the sufferance of the village.”

“That’s enough,” Hiruzen roared, unleashing his chakra and KI, which admittedly paled in comparison to that of the demi-human or Bijuu’s, continuing at normal volume, “Naruto, as long as the seal is only used on Hyuuga then Hirotaka is correct. However,” he added as the KI in the room spiked, “the moment one of the members chooses to leave the clan the seal, if applied, _must_ be removed.”

“The byakugan falls under the authority of the Hyuuga, Hokage,” Hirotaka growled.

“Only so long as it remains solely within the clan. Non-clan shinobi, which includes _ex-clan members_ , fall under _my_ direct authority. I will not have one of _my_ ninja be a slave to a clan they are not a part of.”

“This entire discussion is a farce. The seal cannot be removed.”

Hiruzen narrowed his eyes at the Hyuuga Head, focusing his power on the man.

“You have until the first person with that seal leaves your clan to change that, Hyuuga-san, because if I find a single one of my shinobi with that seal, no matter how or why they became independent of a clan, then it will no longer be Hyuuga Clan business. If that happens, I will prosecute you and any others who made or applied the seal under the charge of forcibly subverting Konoha nin. Am I clear?”

Hirotaka nodded, sweat shining on his brow.

“Dismissed. Wait, one last thing. Do recall that the formation of a new clan is solely my authority, and that any accusations of technique theft would have to be tried in front of all the clan heads. Good day.”

Hirotaka purpled, but left without another word.

Naruto sighed as the killing intent and chakra in the room dispersed.

“Thank you for doing the right thing, Hiruzen. I’ll get started on the counterseal immediately.”

Hiruzen nodded and Chosen and Bijuu left. Alone save for his Anbu, he pulled out his pipe and began to puff on it.

“I’m getting too old for this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the map I've been using, for those curious:
> 
> https://www.deviantart.com/mcskeleton/art/Naruto-World-Map-532687636


	10. Chapter 10

Teuchi sighed as he sat behind his empty counter, his stand sadly devoid of customers. It was to be expected, he reminded himself, he had only opened a few days prior, not to mention he had only moved to Konoha less than a month ago. Few people in the “village” – it was larger than some major towns – knew he existed, much less that he had opened a ramen stand. He was confident in the quality of his ramen – he had chosen to dedicate his life to perfecting the art after all – but sitting in the back of his head was the worry that he wouldn’t attract sufficient customers soon enough to avoid going into the red too deep to recover from.

His fingers twitched to cook something but he restrained the urge. He couldn’t afford to cook without a customer, no matter how relaxing he found it. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let out slowly in an attempt to release stress. It somewhat helped. And then any progress made was promptly undone when he heard the cloth banner be moved aside and looked up to see _Namikaze Naruto_ sitting down in front of him.

“Namikaze-sama,” Teuchi said, eyes wide and teenage voice breaking halfway through, “what can I serve you today?”

Namikaze smiled at him, which was nowhere near as reassuring on a vulpine face than a humanoid one, and said

“Naruto, please, Teuchi-san. And… surprise me.”

Teuchi nodded quickly and grabbed his cooking utensils, sweat beading on his forehead.

“Calm yourself, teuchi-san,” Namikaze chuckled, “I can wait for you to get it right.”

Teuchi stilled his hands and took several deep breaths before nodding.

“Hai, Namikaze-sama.”

Seeing the look from the corner of his vision he quickly corrected “Naruto-sama.”

Namikaze rolled his eyes but let it stand.

Having taken the moment to center himself Teuchi gave his total attention to his cooking, ignoring everything else, each movement exact and deliberate, desperately trying not to think on how this single bowl of ramen could make or break his career.

When he finished he carefully set the bowl of ramen in front of one of, if not the, most powerful being in the Elemental Nations, who promptly started chuckling. Teuchi blinked, and realized that he had served Namikaze… narutomaki. But before he could apologize Namikaze took the bowl and a pair of chopsticks, lightly blowing to cool the ramen so it wouldn’t sear off his taste buds. Teuchi forced himself not to fidget as Namikaze began to eat. After a minute Namikaze finally spoke

“Why are you so nervous Teuchi-san? Your ramen is the best anywhere.”

It took a moment for it to sink in, but when it did Teuchi let out a gusty sigh of relief, prompting another laugh out of Namikaze.

Midway through Namikaze’s third bowl the banner was violently thrown aside, revealing a pre-teen girl with shockingly red hair, in a dress of the same shade, with a hat in the shape of a tomato leaf and stem stuck to her head, and face flushed with rage.

“Hello Kushina-kun,” Namikaze said innocently, though the _thump-thump_ of his tail against the counter said a different story, “I didn’t know they were doing dress up at the academy today. You make a lovely tomato.”

Kushina’s face made a valiant attempt to match her hair and she took a step forward.

“You…” she snarled.

Naruto gave an innocent look – though his tail continued to give him away – and held out his bowl.

“Ramen?”

Kushina froze, eyes darting from Namikaze to the half-eaten bowl of ramen to Tuechi and back again. Finally she sighed in defeat and slid onto another stool.

“I will have my revenge, Naruto,” she grumbled.

“Please do,” Namikaze grinned, “It’s been far to long since I’ve had a good prank war.”

Teuchi looked between the two and felt dread settle into his stomach. Namikaze’s nose twitched.

“Don’t worry, Teuchi-san, you won’t get involved. Neither of us will risk interrupting the ramen supply.”

Kushina nodded seriously.

“You two and your ramen obsession,” a new voice complained good-naturedly.

Looking towards the front of the stand Teuchi saw what could only be Kurama no Kyuubi standing beneath the banner. Despite knowing that the Bijuu’s preferred form was larger than most foxes, Teuchi was taken aback at how small the fox was, smaller than many dogs, especially when compared to the Inuzuka’s ninken.

“Come on, Kurama,” Namikaze whined, “You don’t understand what you’re missing.”

Teuchi was too far away to be certain, but he was fairly sure Kurama rolled his eyes.

“If I feel like eating I prefer to hunt my food. The rush of blood, the feeling of bones breaking, it’s _far_ better than ramen.”

“Heathen!” Namikaze gasped dramatically as Teuchi shuddered a little at the imagery.

 _Well,_ the ramen vendor thought as the fox slipped in to half banter half debate hunting verses ramen, _Konoha is proving to be an interesting place_.

* * *

[Several years later]

Minato darted through the light rain towards Jiraiya’s house, practically giddy with excitement. Throwing open the door he practically bounced into the living room where the Toad Sage was working on a manuscript.

“Sensei! Look!”

Jiraiya looked up and beamed at the sight of Minato's new flack jacket.

“You made Jounin! Two years before I did as well, though Orochimaru still beat you by a year.”

“I probably could have matched him, but I didn’t want to make jounin before our team split up. Besides, sixteen is still quite impressive.”

Jaraiya nodded.

“True. Have you told Naruto or Kushina yet?”

“No need,” Naruto said as he stepped though the still open door, “I could smell his happiness from halfway across Konoha, and hear him from a quarter.”

“Good morning, Naruto-chan,” Minato beamed.

“Morning, Minato-kun,” Naruto smiled back, before making a hand seal that drew the water from his fur into a ball on the tip of his forefinger claw then tossing it back into the street where it landed with a splash.

“Unfortunately, Kushina is on a mission right now, so you’ll just have to share your success with us and your former genin teammates.”

“They’re on a mission as well, I checked,” Minato said.

“I’m sure Ton and Keishi will be very happy when you get back,” Jiraiya said, getting up from his chair, “but I suppose it’s time I have a discussion with you that I’ve kept putting off.”

Minato gave his sensei a wary look. Jiraiya took a deep breath.

“Minato, would you like to become my personal apprentice?”

“Of course, sensei! Though, does this mean that I’d sign the Toad Contract?”

“You bet,” Jiraiya grinned, though he faltered as Minato’s face fell slightly, “What’s wrong? Do you not like toads?”

“It’s not that, it’s just… I was hoping to find the Fox Contract.”

Jiraiya sighed.

“Kid, Konoha shinobi have been trying to find that contract for decades. No one’s found anything.”

Naruto hummed, his eyes vacant as he mentally talked to Kurama. After a moment he shook his head.

“The last time Kurama encountered a fox summoner was a bit over eight-hundred years ago, so he’s no help I’m afraid. However, he does suggest having the toads ask the foxes themselves, or take your chances with reverse summoning.”

Minato turned to his sensei with hopeful eyes, who fidgeted for a moment before relenting.

“I’ll ask.”

Pricking his thumb on a kunai, he summoned a messenger toad.

“Can you see if Fukasaku is available? I have something to ask him.”

The toad nodded and unsummoned itself. Jiraiya sat back down and picked his pen back up.

“And now we wait.”

Several minutes later Jiraiya vanished in a reverse summoning, but what was really unexpected was _Naruto_ vanishing as well. Minato blinkned for a moment before settling down on a couch to wait.

* * *

Kurama had been just about to pounce on the current iteration of Tora the Demon Cat when his avatar was abruptly dispelled. Finding no seal interfering with Naruto he promptly burst back out of the seal, eight meters tall and saturating the area with his chakra and killing intent, only to find himself on Mount Myoboku. Naruto was sprawled on his butt under him and Jiraiya and Fukasaku were in front of him, the former white with terror while the latter only looked alarmed.

“ **What, exactly, were you thinking, little toad, when you summoned us without warning?”** Kurama growled.

“Peace, Kurama-kun, we were unaware that summoning your companion would bring you with him.”

Kurama wheeled around because who would _dare_ call him – oh.

“ **Gamamaru-san,”** he greeted, withdrawing his chakra and KI, “ **It has… been awhile.”**

“Several centuries, yes. My apologies for not giving either you or Naruto-kun warning, but I whished to speak with him.”

“About what?” Naruto asked, pushing himself to his paws.

“Namely, that you have been an infuriating annoyance.”

“I try,” Naruto grinned.

Gamamaru ignored him.

“Your appearance and subsequent bonding with Kurama-kun rendered all of my prophecies and future sight invalid.”

“I wasn’t about to leave my best friend lost in his hatred, enslaved by Madara, and then sealed into a Jinchuuriki,” Naruto retorted.

“And the future is brighter for you having done so,” the ancient toad soothed, “but you still nearly gave me a heart attack. For nearly a year, until the future stabilized enough for me to See again, I had thought that I had lost my seer abilities. It was quite disconcerting.”

“I won’t apologize for doing the right thing.”

“Nor should you. However, I now have a prophecy that I’m fairly certain involves you,” The toad’s mouth quirked up in a brief smirk, “Consider this my petty revenge. _The second life of the twice lived shall unite the heirs of the first sage against the puppeteering shadow of the Moon Princess._ ”

“That makes absolutely no sense,” Jiraiya complained, not noticing Kurama freezing behind him.

To most people that statement would be correct, but Kurama had a highlights reel of Naruto’s previous timeline in his head. The “second life” thing had to refer to Naruto, either his or this timeline’s, while “shadow” and “Moon Princess” referred to Zetsu and Kaguya. “Puppeteering” was a good description of Zetsu’s activities as well. The only real confusion was regarding the “heirs of the first sage”. Kurama’s first thought was the Bijuu, but they were already united – more or less – unless the prophecy had been made before they and the Chosen had arrived at Konoha and he didn’t _think_ that was the case. Unite the Senju, Uzumaki, and Uchiha perhaps? No that didn’t feel right either.

“Can we get to why I asked for a meeting yet?” Jiraiya complained.

At Gamamaru’s nod, Fukasaku answered

“Yes, impatient tadpole, what did you need?”

Jiraiya gave him an indignant look.

“I was wondering if you knew where the Fox Contract was?”

“Destroyed in a fire almost two and a half centuries ago. The Foxes have made a new contract, but whoever you’re asking on behalf of will need to reverse summon themselves to them in order to sign the contract, much like how you came to sign ours.”

The sole human on the mountain slumped slightly but nodded.

“Thank you. Can you send us back, please?”

Jiraiya promptly poofed away and Fukasaku turned to Kurama and Naruto.

“Are you ready to return?”

Kurama dismissed himself and felt Naruto nod.

“We’re ready.”

* * *

Minato jerked upright from where he had shifted to be laying on his sensei’s couch as Jiraiya reappeared in a puff of smoke.

“Did they know?” he asked eagerly.

“Destroyed over two hundred years ago,” Jiraiya said solemnly, “I’m sorry kid.”

Minato’s face fell. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Naruto poof into existence, Kurama dropping out of his shadow to sit next to him.

“If you’re still determined you can try reverse summoning yourself,” Jiraiya offered.

Minato nodded and grabbed a kunai. Pricking his thumb, he focused his mind on the lessons Naruto had taught him about foxes along with his experiences as a fox himself and slammed his hand on the ground. The world twisted away in a whirl of smoke.

When his vision cleared he found himself in an ancient redwood forest, the trees easily large enough to accommodate even Kurama’s full size between them. Rather than wander off and get lost, he sat on the ground and waited. Several minutes later his eyes widened as a red fox easily as large as one of the Inuzuka ninken appeared from the brush.

“A human?” she questioned, “I assume you’re here for our contract?”

Minato nodded eagerly, not trusting his voice not to break.

“It has been far too long since our last summoner, but what makes you think that we’ll agree to you?”

Minato grinned and began to run though hand seals. The vixen jumped back in shock as he morphed into a golden fox as large as she was.

“Well,” she said, “That’ll certainly get the elders’ attention.”

Two days later, Minato reappeared in Konoha with a giant fox at his side, a scroll on his back, and a smile as bright as his hair.

* * *

Orochimaru nodded as he finished his final security sweep, finding nothing amiss. His meeting with Nawaki regarding teaching techniques for the latter’s new genin team had gone overly long, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel upset by it. Nawaki may have become a jounin over a decade ago, but he was still one of Orochimaru’s genin. No matter how needy it seemed or annoying it got, Orochimaru could never begrudge him for going to his sensei for advice. Opening the door to his most secret laboratory, he froze in shock.

“Hello Orochimaru-san,” Danzo said, “I have a proposal for you.”

“Get out,” he spat.

“Such interesting contents this vial has, doesn’t it?” Danzo held up a vial half-filled with red liquid, causing Orochimaru’s blood to freeze, “Why, I wonder what a certain fox would do if he learned you had it and were experimenting with it.”

Orochimaru swallowed and stepped into the lab, closing the door behind him.

“What do you want Shimura-san?”

“I have heard about your interest in kekkei genkai, and I thought that you might want to help explore some of them,” he said, handing the snake sannin a folder.

Despite himself Orochimaru flipped open the folder and read several entries.

“Have you lost your mind?” he demanded, “There’s bloodlines from Kumo, Suna, Iwa, and Taki in here. Are you trying to get them to declare war on Konoha?”

“How I acquired the test subjects is none of your concern. Your job is merely to analyze them, how they work, and how to counter them.”

“And what’s stopping me from going to sensei with this?”

Danzo’s face went blank.

“Who do you think Hiruzen would believe? Me, his genin teammate and closest advisor, or you, who are well known to have a broken moral compass and treats experimental ethics more like guidelines than rules? Especially when it is revealed that everything is already in your name. But I am not completely heartless. You will have plenty of resources to use for your personal projects when not working for the good of Konoha.”

Setting the vial on the counter next to him Danzo rose.

“I expect to see you at your new post by ten o’clock tomorrow, Orochimaru- _kun_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea where the toads came from. They just hopped into my plot as I was writing the scene. Before that happened I was worried that the chapter would be too short as we are between major plot events.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Madara wants his successor, and is willing to kill a lot of people to do it.

Minato knocked on the doorframe to the main living room of the Uzumaki Manor, which had wound up being built not that far from the Namikaze Complex that Naruto had constructed and where Minato himself now lived – after receiving permission from Naruto and Kurama to move in of course. Kushina looked up from the storage scroll she was drawing and smiled at him.

“Morning, Minato. You got an escort mission like you wanted, I take it?”

“What gave it away?” he asked, returning her smile as she stood from her chair.

“You have your ears out,” she said, running a finger along the outside of the pair of golden fox ears on Minato’s head, “you always do that before going on a mission to adjust to their sensitivity.”

“Maybe I pulled them out for you. I know you like how soft they are.”

She laughed softly and shook her head, her fingers switching from stroking the velvet of his ears to lightly tease the hair along the inside, causing them to flick automatically.

“If that was true then you wouldn’t be here in your mission clothes. What did you get?”

“Trade convoy to Iwa by way of Kannabi Bridge.”

Kushina stilled.

“Dangerous route. The fighting between Iwa, Grass, and Taki has been getting extremely indiscriminate along that border and the trade convoys are the only reason Iwa hasn’t blown the bridge yet. All three are getting strapped for resources. If nothing changes Grass will suffer an economic collapse within two years and I fear that our neutrality might not be enough to dissuade them from such a valuable convoy.”

“And risk Konoha declaring war on them? They wouldn’t dare.”

“They may be desperate enough to try. And if they do, they cannot afford to leave any survivors. Who else is going with you?”

“Just my team. I think it’s time for their first A-rank.”

She stared at him.

“Bring them home, Minato. You hear me you species-confused idiot? You bring them home.”

* * *

Minato strode down the long line of wagons waiting just inside of Konoha’s main gate, using the time until Obito showed up to do one last check of the cargo to make sure that no one was smuggling anything that could get the convoy relabeled as a military one. That meant no weapons other than for self-defense, no armor, no military grade gear, etc. However, that ban did not include raw materials, such as ingots, stoles of heavy cloth, or raw ore, of which there was plenty mixed in with luxury goods like rare timber, spices from Tea, and products like Elemental Orbs or coral jewelry. Smuggling attempts did happen semi-regularly, but Minato was pleased that it didn’t look like this convoy was going to be one of the problematic ones.

“Sorry I’m late, I had to help an old lady carry her groceries home,” Obito said apologetically as he bounded to a stop next to Minato.

“Really, Obito?” Kakashi asked in exasperation though Minato only smiled indulgently.

He had actually taken a few weeks back when Obito was a genin to shadow him and had discovered that more often that not his excuses were actually true.

“Since you’re here now why don’t you finish checking the final wagon and then we’ll head out,” Minato said, intentionally pitching his voice so that the entire convoy could hear him.

“That’s it? We’re going through the Grass-Iwa front and only getting four ninja?” his vulpine ears caught a civilian near the front complaining.

“Are you blind?” another civilian retorted, “That’s the _Golden Fox_! He’s easily worth a dozen ninja by himself and if his team is anywhere remotely as skilled as he is we’re better protected than if we had two dozen ninja.”

Minato lazily turned to beam at the pair, causing the former to pale and the latter to wave nervously. After a few minutes Obito hollered

“All clear, we’re good to go!”

Minato nodded.

“Move out.”

* * *

Things went south three kilometers from Kannabi Bridge. Their first inkling was when a dozen kunai slammed into two of the six Fox Summons Minato had called when the convoy had reached the Grass border, forcing them to dispel, shrieking in pain.

“Down!” Minato barked as a leapt over the convoy with Kakashi and another two of his summons.

He was pleased to see the civilians immediately obey, locking the wagon wheels so that the panicking donkeys and mules didn’t drag them everywhere and then taking shelter between the wheels. Landing on the side with at least three dozen ninja charging at them Minato bit his thumb and then slammed it onto the ground, summoning another dozen foxes.

“Protect the convoy!’ he ordered as he charged the oncoming nin with a rasengan forming in each hand, shifting into his preferred battle form – claws on his fingertips, silted eyes, and a vulpine muzzle forming on his face – no longer needing hand seals to shapeshift.

He has just enough time to realize _wait, these are Kiri nin_ before he is in the thick of it and his thoughts occupied with the chaos of battle. When the retreat is sounded less than two minutes later and the shinobi disengage he is surrounded by nine corpses in various states of dismemberment, with Kakashi having accounted for another two and Rin one.

But it’s not until Rin calls “Obito?” that he realizes one of his kits is missing.

“Obito?” Rin calls again, desperation lacing her voice and Minato quickly looks around, but it only takes moments to realize that Obito is _not_ among the bodies littering the ground.

“Minato.”

He turns to see Akane, the fox who had greeted him when he arrived in their realm and his first summons approach him.

“None of the enemy attacked the convoy. We were wide open, but they all focused on you. The convoy wasn’t the target.”

It’s Kakashi who voices what they’re thinking.

“They took Obito.”

Minato snarled.

“Akane, get the convoy across the bridge and wait for me there. Kakashi, I need Shiba to track them.”

“How are we going to catch them?” Rin asked as Kakashi explained the situation to his summons.

Minato morphed into a giant golden fox, two meters tall at the shoulder.

“Get on,” he growled.

* * *

Despite how short the Kiri shinobi’s head start was, it still took Minato half an hour to catch up, finding them clustered in front of a cave. Minato reopens the fight by launching a rasengan from his mouth like Kurama would a bijuudama, killing one and distracting the rest enough for Kakashi and Rin to jump off safely and himself to revert to his battle form. Less a minute into the fight confirms the suspicion he had when the nin first engaged the convoy – these are _not_ Kiri’s best, their strongest probably was a low A-rank _at most_. Minato himself was S-rank, combined with Kakashi – who was a solid A-rank himself – and with support from Rin there was absolutely nothing the Kiri forces could do to keep Team Minato from literally slaughtering them. When they finally realized that they couldn’t win three-quarters of their number had fallen. Several broke and ran, but one jumped into the cave and collapsed the entrance.

Minato frantically looked between the collapsed cave and the fleeing nin.

“Shiba.”

“Obito’s scent trail leads into the cave, Boss, and it doesn’t come back out. I’m not smelling any blood from behind the boulders either.”

The two humans and their humanoid sensei nodded and began to carefully use construction earth jutsus to reopen the cave. It took several minutes before the opening was large enough for Kakashi and Rin to fit through, with Minato turning himself into a normal sized fox to fit.

Within they found two Kiri ninja with their kecks snapped.

The only sign of Obito was his orange goggles, the lenses broken.

* * *

Kushina quietly snickered to herself in anticipation as she carefully filled several balloons with red paint when she was interrupted by a hesitant knock on the door of her manor. Exchanging a confused look with Mikoto, who she had conscripted for this prank, she carefully set the paint aside and balanced the balloon so it wouldn’t spill before answering her door.

Minato stood on her front step, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” he whispered.

She immediately grabbed him in a hug, tears starting to form in her own eyes.

“Who?”

“Obito.”

* * *

Kakashi stared at the picture of his team, having been taken when he met the minimum age requirement for jounin last year, idly toying with the hiraishin kunai that Sensei had given him and Rin the day after they had returned to Konoha.

“ _You know that I have been experimenting with hiraishin,”_ Minato-sensei had said as he handed them to him and Rin, “ _these are special kunai that, upon being thrown, should create a beacon that I can sense and jump to. If Obito had had one…”_

 _“Should?”_ Rin had asked.

“ _I… haven’t been able to get them to reliably activate when used, and I’m not certain why, which was why I chose not to bring them with us to Kannabi. Currently I give it a fifty-fifty chance of working. If I had just buckled down and fixed the damned things earlier…”_

Minato-sensei had spent the last month nearly closeted with Uzumaki Kushina, her ancestor Mito, and Namikaze Naruto, going over what looked like every line of the seal and why each one was placed just so, surrounded by stacks of scrolls and tomes on fuuinjutsu theory.

As Obito had been taken and no… corpse… had been found, he was officially listed as Missing – Captured by Enemy Forces. Just like Kakashi’s father. When Kakashi had been five, shortly before he graduated from the Academy, Sakumo had disappeared from within Konoha. As he had not taken anything with him except for his mission gear, not even food or water, it was assumed that whatever had happened to him, he had not planned for it to take more than a day or two. Search parties had scoured the city and the surrounding area for weeks afterwards, but just like Obito, no trace of him had been found.

Kakashi still remembered the last day, notable because Sakumo had spent the past week looking troubled. His father had wished him luck as Kakashi had left for the academy, saying he had something he needed to do and would probably be back late that night, if not sometime the next day.

Only, he never came back. And as days turned to weeks, rumors began cropping up that Sakumo had turned traitor, and had gotten so prevalent that even Hokage-sama had publicly stated his absolute faith in Kakashi’s father’s loyalty to Konoha, and that whatever had happened to Sakumo, he had not gone willingly.

Averting his eyes from his team picture to the calendar Kakashi frowned. Rin had gone on a medical training mission, focused on how to harvest and prepare medicine in the field, three days ago. She was due back this morning. It was well after noon now, and she had yet to return. Logically, he knew that Rin was in minimal danger, she had three jounin and seven tokujo with her, along with the two-dozen other chuunin, but he couldn’t help but worry.

Leaving the Hatake estate Kakashi made his way to the Namikaze compound, where he jumped into the courtyard via the roof because doors were overrated. Knocking on the door to Minato-sensei’s room he was startled when it was ripped open.

“Kakashi!” Minato beamed, looking extremely rumpled with large bags under his eyes and smelling like he hadn’t had a shower in a week, “I was just about to look for you. Here.” He shoved a hiraishin kunai into Kakashi’s hands, “I fixed the seal. Turns out it was a single wrong character, which was infuriating to find. Now to replace Rin’s. She’s due back tomorrow, right?”

“Sensei… she was due back this morning. She hasn’t returned.”

Kakashi watched as alarm slowly replaced exhaustion on Minato-sensei’s face.

“… I’m going to go convince the Hokage to send us after them then,” Minato-sensei said, “Go pack.”

* * *

Three hours later Minato was sprinting northward through the trees with Kakashi at his side when the strong wind that had been blowing up from the south faltered, and the pair caught the scent of blood and day-old decomp.

“No,” Minato whispered in horror, “No. No, nonoNO!”

Arriving at the scene it was clear that the Konoha force had been wiped out, though they had taken a good number of Kiri nin with them despite being caught in an ambush that had killed half of the Konoha shinobi, including two of the jounin.

“Rin!” Kakashi cried, darting between rotting corpses, “RIN!”

Minato only had eyes for the kunai that had lodged in a tree on the outskirts of the battle site, the defective hiraishin seal wrapped around the hilt having failed to activate.

“SENSEI!”

Minato looked at Kakashi, who had Shiba at his side.

“Rin isn’t among the dead! She might still be alive!”

Minato felt hope bloom in his chest. He had already lost one of his kits, he was not going to lose another!

* * *

Zetsu strode back into the shack, having disposed of the last of the Kiri nin now that they had outlived their purpose. He stood several feet away, watching the Uchiha boy cradled the mutilated and heavily… used… corpse of his former teammate, moaning her name between his sobs.

“Obito, we must leave.”

“No!” the boy snapped, looking up at him, the movement causing the girl’s head to loll towards him, sightless brown eyes open and jaw slack, “I won’t leave her!”

Zetsu was careful to not show his pleasure at the sight of the mankegyo swirling in the Uchiha’s eyes. It made the headache of setting this up worth it.

“Kiri reinforcements are on the way,” the living shadow lied smoothly, “I do not have the chakra left to fight them off and you are still recovering from having mokuton transfused into you.”

The boy set his jaw.

“Konoha –“

“Has abandoned her, just like they abandoned you,” Zetsu softened his tone to project sympathy he didn’t feel, “Rin would not want you to throw your life away in a pointless battle.”

Obito stared at him with tears streaming down his face before nodding.

“Okay,” he whispered.

Picking up the corpse he laid her on the sole cot in the room, arranging her and closing her eyes so that it merely looked like she was asleep before covering her dignity with a threadbare blanket.

“I’m so sorry, Rin,” Obito said, “I’ll remake the world into one you would be proud of, I promise. You know that I don’t forget my promises.”

Zetsu merged with the boy and the pair left without another word.

Ten minutes later Minato and Kakashi arrived.

* * *

Hiruzen looked over the full council, consisting of his advisors and all of the currently available clan heads.

“After the Kannabi Bridge debacle, I sent the Mizukage a letter demanding the heads of the ones responsible for that mission, warning him that Konoha would go to war if he failed to respond,” he began, “Evidently, he did not believe me to be serious, because three days ago Kiri nin ambushed and killed thirty-five of our own barely a dozen kilometers from Konoha itself.”

There was a chorus of gasps and shocked mutters.

“As of now, Konoha is at war. I have already dispatched a messenger to the Daimyo as well as our vassals to inform them of the particulars. _All_ of our jounin and senior chuunin, _including me_ , will marshal at Wave, the exception being those with genin teams who will be remaining behind to secure our rear. In one month’s time, we will set sail for Kiri and torch it. Are there any questions?”

There were murmurs, but no one spoke up.

“Dismissed. Danzo, stay behind for a moment.”

The pair waited for everyone else to file out before Hiruzen continued.

“Uchiha Obito and Nohara Rin were both deliberately targeted by the Kiri shinobi. I want to know who gave them those targets, why, how they got their information, and if possible, their heads.”

“It will be done, old friend. Will any of the Chosen be joining us on campaign?”

“Officially no, this fight is strictly between Konoha and Kiri. Unofficially, it has been a long time since Naruto has been to the coast, and if he happens across Kiri nin while he’s there, well, it’s his prerogative to take offense at their presence, isn’t it?”

The two old men traded smirks.

“Kiri should have known better than to poke us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter turned a tad graphic, didn't it? Sorry, but there's no way to cleanly break someone.
> 
> And can I just say that I love Fantasy Name Generator for giving me names to work with?


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lot of time skips in this chapter.

Minato sat on the deck of the ship watching the eastern horizon glow orange, the flames that were consuming Kirigakure illuminating the ash clouds that also reflected the sunset. Despite only bringing their best, Konoha had still outnumbered Kiri’s forces. Kiri hadn’t stood a chance.

Twelve hours later, Konoha was sailing away, having looted Kiri’s small treasury and jutsu vault, leaving the prisoners – those who had been captured in battle as well as those who surrendered when the Rokudaime Mizukage died – bound on the beach to be rained on by the ash of their burning home.

Minato didn’t feel better for having taken vengeance for Obito and Rin, if anything, he felt worse. Kiri had sent seven and eight-year-olds – who weren’t even out of the academy and didn’t even know any jutsus – along with massed waves of civilians with improvised weapons against jounin with either decades of experience, exceptional strength and skill, or, more often, both. Worse, after Minato killed the Mizukage and one of the Two Swordsmen, the one with Kubikiribōchō, he had broken into Kiri’s black ops archive and discovered that there was no information on either of the missions that took Obito and Rin, or if there had been it had already been destroyed.

He knew that Obito and Rin would have been disappointed in him. Neither would have wanted their deaths to be avenged in such a bloody manner. Even so, he knew that the entire fight was necessary. Konoha _had_ to respond to such a provocation, their sovereignty had been directly challenged, the only way Kiri could have been more blatant was with a raid on Konoha itself. The response _had_ to be both overwhelming and dramatic to discourage others, and Minato couldn’t think of a greater or more impressive statement of putting an entire village to the torch. It didn’t mean he had to like it.

Hiruzen sat down next to him on a folding chair one of his ANBU produced.

“I hope we never have to do this again,” Minato said quietly after several minutes of silence.

“So do I, Minato, so do I,” Hiruzen said tiredly.

The pair watched the fire reflected off of the clouds for several more minutes before Minato spoke again.

“I broke Kubikiribōchō into a dozen pieces and scattered them before I left. No idea how long it'll take before it’s reformed. Did whoever who faced Samehada manage the same?”

Hiruzen shook his head.

“Samehada wasn’t in the village, it and it’s wielder left on a mission to one of the eastern islands yesterday.”

Minato exhaled through his teeth.

“We need to get ahead of that before it becomes a rallying point for the survivors.”

The hokage hummed before looking at Minato.

“How would you go about doing that?”

Minato thought for a minute.

“Normally, I’d post a bounty on him for information and send a massive strike team of our best, including the sannin, to kill him. However, the wielder is highly likely to declare himself the next Mizukage, and Samehada gives his claim a lot of legitimacy. And assassinating kages, even if they’re just candidates, is a spectacularly bad idea politically. That said, Mizukages are a dime a dozen, it’s _Samehada_ that’s important. So. I’d put a massive bounty on the sword itself, and an even higher one on its destruction, proof of the latter to be presented by providing physical remains, Memory Transfer Jutsu, or Yamanaka Mind Reading, pick two.”

Hiruzen nodded.

“It’s thinking like that that merely confirms my decision to make you the next Hokage.”

Minato stared.

“Me? Yondaime Hokage?”

“You,” Hiruzen smiled, “Of the candidates I seriously considered, Danzo is even older than I am, Orochimaru prefers his research, Tsunade I could probably bully into taking the hat but is not particularly interested, and Jiraiya…”

“…Is a feminine revolt waiting to happen,” Minato finished wryly, “One that Tsunade would probably lead herself.”

Hiruzen chuckled but nodded.

“That left you.”

“Not Kushina?”

“I considered her. But you know how stubborn she can be, how difficult it can get her to drop a bad idea. While situationally useful as a ninja, as Hokage that trait probably would get a lot of people killed.”

Minato grimaced but nodded. Kushina did have a tendency to ignore advice at times.

“Speaking of Kushina,” Hiruzen continued, “Did you know she’s gained a title?”

“Oh?”

“The _Crimson Kitsune_. Apparently, she had nine chakra chains out for most of the battle, combined with how they spent most of that time bloody, her hair color, temper, and love of pranks…”

Minato nodded.

“It fits.”

….

“So, when am I taking the hat?”

* * *

Minato stood several paces behind Hiruzen, with Akane on his left and Kushina on his right, listening as the Sandaime Hokage addressed Konoha from a balcony built onto the Hokage’s Tower for just this purpose, seals projecting his voice so that all could hear.

“…And so, with the end of the Third Shinobi War, I shall emulate my predecessor in resigning to place this burden on younger shoulders who can bear the weight far better than I. It is my pleasure to introduce Namikaze Minato, the Yondaime Hokage!”

Minato strode forwards, flanked by his two best friends, and began his acceptance speech.

* * *

When he finished, Kushina stepped up next to him.

“I have something I’d like to say, if you’d allow me, my Hokage.”

Curious he nodded.

“Namikaze Minato, will you be my husband?”

There were a bunch of cheers and whistles, but the crowd quickly quieted to hear Minato’s response.

“You mean I wasn’t already?”

As laughter spread through the crowd Minato smiled at Kushina.

“Of course I will.”

* * *

Minato sighed deeply as he shut the door of the Uzumaki Manor behind him, having moved in with Kushina after marrying her. Entering the living area, he saw his wife sitting next to Mito on a couch going over catalogues for nurseries while the ancient Uzumaki knitted what was starting to look like an infant sized onesie, stitching in seals for cleaning, repair, and several redundant hiraishins as she went.

“Long day?” Kushina asked.

Minato nodded, shrugging out of his flame patterned haori and hat onto a stand placed specifically for them before sitting down next to Kushina and leaning against her.

“The Kazekage and Raikage are being infuriating. The rest of the trade agreement has already been signed, but they’re still squabbling over who protects what parts of the trade route.”

Kushina put her arm around him and began to run her fingers through his hair, smiling when he obligingly brought out his fox ears for her to pet.

“You two make a cute couple,” Mito said, prompting a laugh from Kushina and a tired grin from Minato.

Minato’s smile fell into a frown of concentration before an amazed look overtook his face as he turned to Kushina.

“You,” he breathed, “have two heartbeats.”

“Already?” Kushina asked in surprised pleasure, “It’s only a little over six weeks. I thought heartbeats weren’t audible until nine or ten.”

Minato dismissed his fuzzy ears and put his natural pair against the small bump on his wife’s belly, only to bring back his fox ears after a moment.

“I can’t hear the kit’s heartbeat with human ears,” he admitted.

Kushina went through several hand seals and shifted her own ears into ones of the fox. After several moments of concentration, she met Minato’s gaze and beamed.

“I hear him too.”

“You two are going to give me diabetes,” Mito teased, causing the pair to laugh.

That night both went to bed without reverting to human ears, letting the new heartbeat of their third, and as yet unborn, family member lull them to sleep.

* * *

When October tenth rolled around and word came that Kushina had gone into labor, Kurama was on full alert. According to Naruto’s memories, in the previous timeline he had been sealed into Naruto within hours of his birth after attacking Konoha under the influence of Obito’s Sharingan. Unfortunately, none of Naruto’s memories say where Akatsuki, if the organization yet exists, was based, now or in the future, and despite the fact that the Bijuu and Chosen have been quietly looking for years no one had found any trace of the Lost Uchiha.

“Relax, Kurama,” Naruto said from where he was sitting in the living room of their compound, “Kushina and the kit will be fine. Tsunade’s there after all, along with the best midwives in Konoha.”

“It’s not the birth that worries me,” Kurama admitted, “But whether a sharingan wielder will try to enslave me like last time.”

“…What last time?”

“Your previous timeline.”

“I traveled back in time? When?”

Kurama whipped around to stare at Naruto, who looks back in confusion.

He can feel the emotions of Naruto’s soul; the confusion isn’t faked.

This isn’t a prank.

Naruto genuinely cannot remember.

“Naruto, what are the names of your parents?”

Naruto’s mouth worked for a few seconds.

“…I can’t remember.”

"What were the names of your kits?"

"...I don't know."

“When were you born?”

“October?”

“Son Goku’s first Chosen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your first words to me?” Kurama whispered.

“…Please don’t eat me?”

Kurama stared at his first true precious person, fighting the horror and fear bubbling up within.

“What’s the oldest thing you remember?”

Naruto thought for a long moment.

“Betrayal of Uzushio, I think.”

“I’m dragging you to see Tsunade tomorrow. No excuses.”

Naruto nodded, greatly disturbed.

* * *

The next day the Uzumaki and Namikaze families and immediate friends – genin, teammates, and senseis, along with Tsunade – gathered in the living room of the Uzumaki Manor, Kushina exhausted and sitting gingerly on the couch with Minato half wrapped around her, holding a small sleeping larval-stage human.

“His name,” she whispered so as to not wake the sleeping infant, “is Naruto.”

“Really, Kushina-chan,” Kakashi whispered, “You named him after the ramen topping?”

“No,” Minato replied, looking at Kurama’s Naruto, “After Jii-chan.”

“I’m honored,” Naruto said thickly, sending _shock-surprise-pleasure_ down Kurama’s bond.

 ** _Oh, the irony of being named after yourself_** ¸ Kurama thought to his human, prompting a gentle slap to the back of his head.

Minato noticed and lightly glared.

“Got something to say Kurama?”

“Only that I’m fairly certain that my Naruto _was_ named after the ramen topping.”

That prompted a round of chuckles and another gentle slap, only for everyone to quickly quiet as mini-Naruto stirred in his blanket burrito.

“Okay, everyone out, Kushina and Naruto need their sleep,” Minato whispered, rising and shimmying everyone out of the room.

“Tsunade, I need a word,” Kurama quietly called once they were out of the room, causing everyone to look at him.

Tsunade nodded and led them into the tea parlor.

“What is it, Kurama-san?” she asked.

“Naruto’s suffering from significant memory loss. Specifically, he can’t remember anything from before Uzushio. _Please_ tell me you have time available today.”

She stiffened and nodded.

“I have a time slot today at three.”

“We’ll be there.”

* * *

It was over half an hour of Tsunade running medical diagnostic after medical diagnostic over Naruto before she had a theory of what was going on.

“Okay, so. Naruto, you have absolutely no stem cells left anywhere in your body which means your natural regeneration outside of your skin and liver is basically nil. In a normal human, this would be the point where their organs slowly shut down as cells die off and aren’t replaced, however Kurama’s regeneration is more than compensating everywhere except the brain. There, either the way the new cells are created bypasses the process the brain uses to transfer information from old cells to new ones, or the process itself has been corrupted and is no longer working. Personally, I suspect the latter.

“What this means is that as old cells die and are replaced, you are permanently losing information. In practice, you have a hard limit on how long ago you can remember something. Upside is that you won’t experience common symptoms of dementia or senility – forgetfulness, impaired judgment, loss of intelligence, etc – downside is that this steady information loss is affecting your _entire_ brain, including the stem, so your body will eventually forget how to do autonomic processes, like breathing or heartbeat.”

“How do we fix this?” Kurama immediately asked.

Tsunade sat back in her doctor’s chair with a sigh.

“The obvious answer is to restart the information transfer process, but I don’t even know if that’s possible. I know said process must exist due to empirical evidence, but like always with the brain, while I can point to something and say ‘that does X’, I have no idea _how_ it does X.”

“How long do I have?” Naruto asked calmly.

“Don’t you _dare_ say that!” Kurama snarled, “This _will not_ kill you, Naruto, _I won’t let it!_ ”

Naruto gave him a small sad smile.

“Tsunade?”

“Years. Less, if you take damage - like a concussion. I’m sorry that I can’t be more precise. I don’t even know what sections of the brain stem govern which functions, much less how much corruption they can sustain before failing.”

Kurama felt his horror and fear start to overwhelm the barriers he had locked them behind.

“Kurama,” Naruto said kindly, “It’ll be okay.”

“ _Okay?_ This is – no! _This is not okay_! You’re – I can’t – _How can you be so calm about this?”_

Kurama ignored his siblings starting to clamor in the back of his mind, his emotions spilling over into their mental plain.

“No matter how fast, how far, how hard you run, the Shinigami will always be there to greet you when you stop. I’m _old_ Kurama. I’ve walked this earth for two hundred and three years now, most of them at your side, but I’ve always known that I wouldn’t walk forever. It’s okay, Kurama, I have time.”

_“It’s okay, Kurama, I have time.”_

Same words, same person, same calm acceptance of death, and Kurama vows that he will avert this sentence like he had the last.

He cannot lose Naruto.

* * *

Oroshimaru sighed as he slipped into his private lab and slumped into his chair. The most recent experiments with imbuing mokuton into children… Danzo would probably deem it a success, but to Orochimaru it was just plain wasteful. Of the sixty children he was told to use, thirty-two had died, with only eight successfully gaining the kekkei genkai. If it hadn’t for his experiments with Naruto’s blood and the mutagenic properties within, he probably would have lost them all. Orochimaru didn’t know where Danzo had gotten the children, especially the two clan children – who had both died – and it was probable that he never would.

Such a _waste_.

If they had used the artificial embryo insemination and modification methods that Orochimaru had wanted, they could have had _dozens_ of mokuton users by now, but Danzo had been unwilling to wait the additional four to five years needed for that plan to bear fruit.

With a quiet groan he got to his feet and wandered over to a large machine mounted on one of the walls. Resigned, he went through the process of opening the machine, fully expecting yet another failure, which was a pity because he had been…

He stared.

Carefully closing the machine, he blinked hard several times and then opened it again.

He stared some more.

Then he began to go through every diagnostic jutsu he knew.

When he finished, he closed the machine and fell back into his chair staring at it with a mix of shock, amazement, and delight.

He had done it. Done the impossible. Done something that not even the Sage of the Six Paths, the father-creator of the Bijuu, had managed to do.

…Now what?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A mini-Naruto has appeared!
> 
> Also, I knew what old-Naruto's fate was going to be by the second chapter, if you look back I'm sure you can see the foreshadowing. 
> 
> For those of you who have been chanting "Kill Danzo, kill Danzo, KILL DANZO" you can put down your torches and pitchforks, that comes to a head next chapter.
> 
> Finally, I have been thinking about ending the story with Naruto's death and starting a sequel beginning at the start of the Naruto timeline, mainly because I have ideas for spin-off involving Chosen-Naruto and Chosen Kurama (Yes, Kurama will get transferred to young-Naruto, obviously) being transferred into the cannon Naruto-verse. Thoughts?


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, it wouldn't be that hard to have Danzo take cannon Orochimaru's place. Hmmm.

Orochimaru sat in his lab staring into space. It hadn’t been until he succeeded that he realized that he had never expected to succeed, and he had no plans on what to do now. If he was to prevent his successful experiment from failing now that it was finally viable, he needed specific supplies, and there was no way he’d be able to sneak those supplies past Danzo. He was a scientist, not a spymaster. As it was, the amount of time it would take Danzo to notice something was going on and investigate his lab could likely be measured in hours. Twenty-four to thirty-six, to be precise.

He knew _exactly_ what Danzo would do if he got his hands on this, use it up and discard it like trash, just like he treated his operatives, and that was provided he didn’t order “destructive testing”. Orochimaru’s Magnum Opus deserved a _far_ better fate than that.

He frowned in thought.

…The Fox would probably be willing to protect this from Danzo, now that he thought about it, but there was no way to bring him in without also revealing the experiments that Danzo had ordered him to do, and, well…

Thirty-two children, aged four to five, were dead, including two clan children. Not even Hiruzen at his height had the political capital to pardon that, much less Minato, who was still securing his powerbase, and that was only the most recent experiment Danzo had had him do. Danzo had made it very clear early on that should the experiments come to light, the Hokage would have to order Orochimaru’s death. To not do so would fundamentally compromise his legitimacy and likely spark a revolt.

…But perhaps, if Orochimaru played his cards right, he could get the sentence lessened to permanent exile. Which would be painful and a massive setback, but he could always rebuild. Of course, that would require something very big.

Nodding Orochimaru stood and went to his secret safe, keyed to his blood and chakra signature, and withdrew all of his information on ROOT. Information on their training, all of the major bases and most of the minor ones, their Standard Operating Procedure, multiple passwords – though some were outdated – records on where some of his test subjects had come from, and his ace, a mission report on the successful elimination of an Uzumaki who attempted to warn Konoha about Uzushio’s coup.

The problem with relying on Mutually Assured Destruction, was that it was founded on the principles that no one was willing to pay the cost.

For securing his legacy, the price was acceptable.

Summoning his best stealth snake, he gave her the folders and a letter, to be delivered to someone he knew ROOT was unable to observe and would be more than willing to act.

* * *

Naruto stilled as he felt a small cluster of emotions slip into his complex and then move towards his workshop, where he was currently fashioning some more Elemental Orbs for sale. Standing, he opened the door to stare into the darkening courtyard, his eyes tracking the small knot of emotion as it flickered from location to location, trying to dodge his gaze. Whomever this was, they were good, he saw nothing, smelled nothing, heard nothing. Indeed, the only reason he knew they were there at all was by way of his emotion sense, and few realized that that was keen enough to track people with.

 _We have an intruder,_ Naruto thought to Kurama, who immediately dispelled his avatar and reformed it in front of Naruto, two meters tall at the shoulder and growling at the now somewhat worried ball of emotions.

“We know you’re there,” Naruto said, “Why don’t you stop hiding and explain your presence?”

After a pause a two-meter-long black and blue snake summons flickered into being. Naruto raised an eyebrow.

“Tell me, why did Orochimaru send you rather than come himself?”

“Hissss messssage explainsss better than I can,” the snake hissed, before vomiting up a dozen large folders with a sheet of paper stuck to the top, unsummoning itself when finished.

Naruto cautiously approached the pile leaning over to read the letter stuck to the top. When he finished, he picked up a folder and flipped through it, frowning. Closing it, he drew the hiraishin kunai Minato had given him for emergencies and threw it into the ground. A few seconds later, Minato appeared.

“We have a major problem,” Naruto said, handing the Hokage Orochimaru’s letter.

* * *

That night, or to be more accurate, pre-dawn morning, Minato sent a dozen foxes to stealthily slip into the bedrooms of the various clan heads, waking them, briefing them on what Danzo had done, and the operation that was going to launch at eight o’clock that morning to take down ROOT. In this Minato agreed with Orochimaru’s letter, any significant preparation would tip off Danzo and cause him to go to ground, at which point they’d never find him, so they had to move _now_ with what they had on hand. Hiruzen was notably excluded, and in fact would be going under house arrest the moment Minato had the shinobi to spare. There was no way the old man could have been ignorant of this.

The worst part was that ANBU was hopelessly compromised, which meant that Minato had to rely on ninja of variable quality chosen by the Clan Heads to take on ROOT, though Minato could at least rely on Kakashi, Genma, Raido, and Iwashi to be by his side when he went to personally apprehend Danzo, with Kushina, Mito, and Naruto-Jii-chan remaining behind to make sure Danzo or ROOT didn’t get their hands on his Naruto to use as leverage, though Kurama was going to secure Orochimaru and whatever experiment that caused him to flip on Danzo, which Orochimaru claimed had great personal value to the Bijuu.

It worried Minato just how much of the mission had been planned out by Orochimaru, especially since the latter had admitted in his letter that operating under coercion or not, Minato would have to either exile the snake sannin or kill him, though Orochimaru was clearly angling for the lesser punishment. Orochimaru had a lot of very good reasons to continue being silent like he had for years, and Minato couldn’t conceive of anything that would make him abruptly decide to gamble his life like this. There was the very real possibility that this was a trap, but if it was one it was baited too well – the evidence provided was definitive. Danzo had to go, regardless of Orochimaru’s possible plots. Due to the compartmentalization required to keep ROOT from noticing and alerting Danzo, Minato wouldn’t even know how many shinobi the clans were going to give him until moments before the operation started.

The only good news was the amount of information they had on ROOT’s bases and security, which should hopefully limit casualties, along with Danzo’s schedule. Ironically for someone who ran an illegal black ops organization Danzo had a daily routine that he usually adhered to with clockwork punctuality, arriving at his main base at eight-thirty every morning, which was why the operation would be starting half an hour earlier.

Minato sighed and ran his fingers through his hair before checking his gear again from where he was sitting in Naruto’s nursery facing the window, Kushina opposite him facing the door, both of their vulpine ears and noses twitching at every new sound and scent. He knew that both of them should get some sleep in preparation for the mission, but there was no way he’d be able to mange it, not with the worry that at any moment ROOT could burst into his house after Naruto.

* * *

Dawn found Orochimaru still in his lab, rubbing his eyes in stress induced exhaustion. He had no way of knowing whether the information he had sent actually reached the Namikaze compound, much less if it was being acted on. If it had been intercepted, then in forty-five minutes to an hour from now Danzo was going to come through his lab door. If that happened… well there was only one way out of his lab. And while Orochimaru _might_ be able to defeat Danzo due to being nearly twenty years younger, his experiments would near certainly be collateral damage, and that was assuming ROOT didn’t join in. Which they would.

Speaking of his experiments, he was nearly out of supplies he had on hand to keep them functional, very soon he would have to seriously consider either trying to sneak supplies past his watchers, or just grabbing them and running. The former was almost certainly doomed to fail, while the latter might succeed in getting him out of Danzo’s clutches, but would only exasperate his resource shortage. Perhaps he could leave them with one of the Namikazes? The thought of leaving them in the crib with Uzumaki Naruto made him grin in schadenfreude at what the reactions of the Guard Platoon would be if he managed to pull that off.

A quiet rumble of earth being shifted by a jutsu drew his attention to a corner of his lab that he had cleared, just in time for the ceiling to split open and deposit a very dirty red fox onto the floor.

* * *

Kurama shook the dirt from his fur and looked around, growing to two meters tall as he did so. The room was filled with machines and workbenches with scientific apparatus, giving the room a cluttered air, with Orochimaru watching him from where he was sitting next to the largest of machines, his chair facing the door, and while he was visibly expressionless as usual, he was taking no measures to disguise his scent and Kurama was an empath.

 ** _Orochimaru is genuinely relieved to see me,_** he thought to Naruto, **_if this is a trap, it is not of his doing._**

Naruto responded with a burst of acknowledgement.

Kurama cautiously strode towards the sannin.

“Tell me, Orochimaru, what is this thing you have discovered that is of such importance to me and my kin?”

Orochimaru pointed to the machine next to him, which Kurama noticed had a large hatch open.

“Take a look.”

He looked.

The first thing he noticed was the body of a red fox, a vixen specifically, with large tubes leading from her neck into the machine, one carrying very dark red blood away, the other bringing bright red back. She also smelled of death and wasn't even breathing.

The second thing the Nine-Tailed Fox noticed was the pair of newborn kits curled up against the vixen’s belly, asleep, both possessing three tails.

Kurama stared in shock, then gently, tentatively, reached out and felt their chakra, similar to his own in the same way that his and his sibling’s resembled both the Juubi and Hagoromo.

“How?” he breathed.

“It took a lot of trips to the Mountain’s Graveyard to bring back enough kitsune bones for me to extract a sufficient genetic profile, but it took Namikaze’s blood and your chakra to make them viable. As far as I can tell, yes, they are kitsune in truth.” Orochimaru smirked, “And the closest thing they have to a father is you.”

 _Kurama, what’s going on? Your emotions are going all over the place_ , Naruto thought to him.

He was a father?

* * *

It was seven past eight and Danzo was just finishing his breakfast when one of his agents shunshined into the room, instantly putting him on high alert. His agents knew better than to disturb his morning routine for anything other than a dire emergency.

“Danzo-sama,” the agent said, “All of ROOT’s primary bases are under assault.”

That qualified.

“Who dares?” he demanded.

“All major clans are represented. All bases under assault have already been breached, communications have been cut. I do not have further information. The other three operatives on counter-intel are gathering further intelligence of personnel involved and their aims, however I assumed that you would wish to be alerted immediately.”

Danzo nodded and stood.

“You assumed correctly. Head to the armory and retrieve-“

He was cut off by the fuuinjutsu wards around his manor, purchased from an Uzumaki seal master before the Betrayal at great cost and secretly installed, spectacularly failing, followed by the wall around his home being blown in. Looking out his dinning window he saw Namikaze, in his partial fox battle form, and his guard platoon, plus Hatake, striding across his lawn in clear challenge. That… was a problem.

“Change of orders, you are to collect all other ROOT agents outside of the bases and capture Uzumaki Naruto. If capture is not possible, kill the child. Go.”

The agent nodded and vanished while Danzo sprinted towards the stairwell that led to his armory in the basement. Minato was a formidable fighter, easily capable of matching Danzo blow for blow in his prime, the fact that he was decades younger turned an equal fight into a difficult one. Fighting Minato, his guard, and Hatake? Baring exceptional stupidity or luck, that fight was only going to end one way.

He should have had Orochimaru experiment with the Mokuton earlier, he reflected bitterly, as well as ignored his caution and disappeared several Uchiha with the Mangeyoko Sharingan. Flight was now his only option. If he could escape Konoha, ROOT had a network of safehouses and bunkers all across Fire Country and its neighbors, which would allow him to go to ground and rebuild. Civilian-borns didn’t only appear in Hidden Villages, after all.

Danzo had just reached his armory, located under the dining room, when he felt more than heard the wall of his manor be blown in. He hurriedly began to throw on his armor and grab his weapons. The path to the armory was small and narrow, a true kill zone, which meant that rather than try to go down it Minato would – there was a massive boom from directly overhead and the ceiling cracked alarmingly despite the extensive strengthening seals – try to drop the ceiling on him.

Grabbing his emergency field kit, he opened one of the three secret passages leading out of his house at the back of the armory and began to jog down it, clattering lightly – he hadn’t had the time to secure everything properly, the ceiling would _not_ hold up to another blow from Minato. However, he hadn’t gone ten meters when there was a boom from above and an instinctive shunshin was the only thing that prevented him from being crushed by a cave in, though he wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid getting hit in the side of the head from a falling rock.

Danzo swore colorfully, staggering into the tunnel wall and clutching the side of his head, hand coming away bloody and his right eye refusing to focus. Just how sensitive were Minato’s fox ears? Pity that the fox had already had seals tattooed into his scalp – hidden by his hair – to prevent sensory overload. Danzo glared at the collapsed tunnel. Couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back… might as well go up.

Using an earth jutsu he blew the roof of the tunnel up and out, eliciting started cries from his foes, and leapt out of the hole to land on his lawn, just in front of his now collapsed wall, and things moved very quickly. Duck one kunai, deflect the second up, Minato teleported to it, rasengan in hand. Dodge left, jump slightly so shaking ground doesn’t trip, raise earth wall to block Shiranui, suppress Raido with fireball, shit where’s Ka-

* * *

Minato panted slightly as he watched Danzo topple forward with Kakashi’s kunai lodged in the base of his skull.

“That was a lot easier than I thought it would be,” Genma said, breathing heavily.

“It is very difficult to track three foes at once,” Minato said, “Tracking five? I knew that one of us would get a clean shot sooner or later. Still, good shot Kakashi.”

Kakashi nodded, looking pleased. Minato froze as he felt the wards on _Naruto’s nursery_ go off and barked.

“Grab on! _Now!_ ”

A second later he teleported to the nursery with all four attached, and the first thing he saw was a ROOT shinobi standing over Naruto’s crib, sword in hand. Minato’s hand came up, rasengan forming, but it was too slow, too late, the tanto was already descending towards his son’s heart –

And then the older Naruto substituted himself for Minato’s son, rasenshruiken blowing apart the ninja even as the tanto plunged into his chest, the concussion of the blast and sudden increase in weight causing the crib to collapse.

“Naruto!” Minato cried desperately, looking around.

“Here!” Raido said, causing Minato to turn and catch his screaming son from Raido’s gentle toss.

“Kakashi, stay here,” Genma ordered and the Guard Platoon vanished into the house.

Old Naruto tore the blade from his chest with a grunt of annoyance and got up to stand next to Minato, who was carefully checking Little Naruto for injuries. Thankfully there were none, Raido had caught the kit before he hit the floor from where he had been substituted to.

“Danzo?” Naruto growled.

“Dead.”

“Good.”

* * *

Tsunade led her strike team, consisting of her apprentice, Orochimaru’s former genin, and Jiraiya, through the rather horrific laboratory towards Orochimau’s personal lab. So many dead children… how had nobody noticed them going missing? Even if her old teammate had been working for Danzo under duress – personally, she had her doubts – he had to answer for the atrocities that had been committed here.

Reaching the correct hallway the team paused as there was a pulse of familiar chakra, a surge of even more familiar killing intent, a loud bang, and miscellaneous ROOT parts came flying out of the hallway. Carefully poking her head around the corner Tsunade warily eyed the fox that was occupying the entire doorway at the other end of the hall.

“Kurama-san? We’re here to extract you and Orochimaru. Please don’t blow us up?”

The giant fox eyed her and huffed, but obligingly shrunk a bit and stepped aside, allowing the team to cautiously enter the room. Orochimaru was waiting for them with a thick folder in hand.

“Shizune? Here. These are the medical records of the twenty-eight children that were still alive as of last night.”

Shizun almost fumbled as Orochimaru shoved the folder at her. Tsunade glared.

“As head of Konoha’s hospital and senior most medical nin in the city, shouldn’t you be handing those to _me_ , Orochimaru?”

“Oh, no,” the snake sannin said, with his smug _I know something you don’t_ grin, “You’re going to be carrying something far more valuable.”

He then reached into something that looked like a worrying cross between an incubator and a dialysis machine, pulling out two small hairless bundles and put them into her hands. The first thing she noticed was the distinctly Bijuu-like chakra. The second was that the two bundles were faintly mewing and weakly squirming. The third was that both had three tails. Involuntarily she glanced up to see Kurama completely focused on the two kits in her hands, eyes fixed and ears pricked.

“Uh,” Tsunade said as she tried to readjust to this development, “There’s an Inuzuka vet clinic a few blocks from here-“

“Akane is still at the Uzumaki Manor, along with Naruto and Minato,” Kurama interrupted, “We are going there.”

Given his tone and the way his chakra was pressing on the air, there was only one answer the Bijuu was going to accept.

“…Fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So how badly did my note at the beginning make you twitch?
> 
> I thought about including Orochimaru's letter, but it would just be a rehash of information you readers already know, so I didn't bother. Feel free to use your imagination.


	14. Chapter 14

Inuzuka Isao was widely regarded as one of, if not the, best veterinarians in Konoha. He had been tapped for the UpROOTing – as everyone was referring to the operation to take down Danzo – as part of the Inuzuka’s medical support, though thankfully ninken casualties had been light enough that when an emergency message came from the Hokage he was able to be freed up with minimal trouble. And so began one of the strangest examinations he had ever made. Not _the_ strangest though, that time where a puppy had somehow managed to crawl into his owner’s uterus still took the cake. (He never got the full story there, but suspected the Akimichi had been playing around with size changing techniques)

Carefully placing the kitsune kit back into the nest made from a heated blanket next to his brother, having fed the pair with formula for fox kits retrieved from his clinic, both kits quickly being obscured from view by a swish of Kurama’s tails from where he was curled around the nest, Akane watching from a few meters away, amused at the Bijuu's overprotective actions.

“This is weird,” Isao mused, “despite meeting or exceeding the average size and weight for kits, my gut’s convinced that both are premature.”

“Really?” Orochimaru asked from where he was seated between a pair of jounin that Isao suspected were ‘off-duty’ ANBU, “They had a gestation period of sixty-five days.”

“And yet,” he replied, “I don’t think their skeletons have finished mineralizing yet and the proportions aren’t right. But I think we are overlooking something obvious. They’re kitsune. They probably have more in common with fox summons than ordinary foxes.”

Orochimaru scowled briefly, as though it was personally offensive that he hadn’t thought of that, but nodded.

“Akane-san,” he asked “What’s the average gestation time for your species?”

“Between eleven and twelve weeks,” the giant fox replied.

“Operating on the assumption that the kitsune’s gestation period is more in common with summons, then they are really premature, it would certainly explain why their three siblings were still-born,” Orochimaru muttered, a hint of concern in his tone.

“So, what can we do?” Kurama asked, looking at Isao worriedly.

Isao sighed.

“Not much we _can_ do,” he admitted, “Other than keep them warm, fed, and clean. Might need to manually stimulate their bowel movements too, I don’t know. My main concern is feeding them. The formula I gave them seems to be sufficient, but it’s designed for foxes people keep as pets. Not spirit foxes."

He looked at Akane.

“Do you know of any fox summons who are nursing?”

“Not off the top of my head, but I will ask. It may take me a few days though,” she said, getting up and wandering out of the guest bedroom, presumably to update the Hokage.

“That’s it?” Kurama asked a bit plaintively, “Just wait and see?”

“I’m sorry,” Isao apologized, “I know the waiting is always the hardest.”

Kurama didn’t answer, instead curling tighter around the nest and tucking his nose into it, shifting his tails so that he could see the kits. Recognizing the dismissal, Isao packed up his bag and headed downstairs to find Jomaro, his ninken, waiting tucked against the wall next to the stairs, out of the way of the ninja using the manor as the operations center for mopping up ROOT and investigating the bases uncovered, the Hokage’s Tower known to have been compromised.

 _“Will the pups be okay?”_ Jomaro asked, rising as Isao reached the bottom steps.

“I hope so. They were just born way too early. I don’t know if they’ll make it.”

The large ninja dog whined and gently pressed against his side, causing him to loop his arm over Jomaro’s neck and rub his ear.

“Kakashi,” he heard Gai call – everyone knew the voice of Konoha’s bombastic Green Beast – but what quieted the room was how uncharacteristically somber he sounded, “Kakashi.”

Isao turned to see Kakashi approach Gai, who was holding a wrapped bundle and looking miserable.

“What is it Gai?” he asked warily.

“I am sorry to lay this most unyouthful burden upon you, my eternal rival, but you need to know.”

He held out the bundle to Kakashi, who hesitantly took it and began to unwrap it, revealing a tanto that, when inched out of its sheath, had a pure white blade.

“Where?” he asked, voice shaking slightly.

“Traitorous Danzo’s personal armory. I found this as well.”

Gai produced a folder from somewhere and handed it to Kakashi.

“How?” he croaked, "How did he?"

“Sakumo discovered ROOT. In order to reveal Danzo’s treachery to the Sandaime, he infiltrated ROOT, succeeded in obtaining proof, but was captured trying to escape. He died under torture eight days later, unbroken. I’m sorry, my rival.”

Kakashi began to shake and between one blink and the next the Hokage was there, wrapping the young jounin in a hug.

“Out,” Namikaze quietly ordered, and Isao joined everyone else in clearing the room.

He quietly ignored the muffled sob he heard behind him.

* * *

Hiruzen sat in his parlor, looking though the window at Konoha. When he had heard the fighting break out he had rushed to defend Konoha, only to find eight jounin, including a Hyuuga, a Yuta, and an Uchiha telling him to stay put. When he had protested, they replied that they were willing to use force to ensure his cooperation. The sight of the three shinobi from clans known to be antagonistic towards each other, especially given the hatred between the Hyuuga and their former branch house, all in agreement was what convinced him to comply and then get the reasons from Minato. He knew that Minato wouldn’t sideline him like this unless his presence would make things worse.

It was several hours after noon when Minato entered, his fox ears out. Hiruzen stood to greet him, warily eyeing how his ears flicked with strong emotion.

“Minato-“

“Sarutobi,” Minato growled with anger, “I think you need to see this.”

He then grabbed Hiruzen’s upper arm in a vice like grip and a blink later the pair were standing in front of a warehouse that had been blown open. Hiruzen didn’t have a chance to locate where he was in the city before Minato half led half dragged the former Hokage into the warehouse and then past a pair of guards standing in front of a hidden tunnel. The tunnel opened up into a series of rooms heavily damaged from shinobi combat and stained with blood, with numerous members of the Military Police swarming over them, Sharingan, Byakugan, and Inuzuka ninkin being put to work ferreting out the secrets hidden in the complex, and every one of them eyed him with anger as the pair passed.

Eventually Minato led him into a lab that appeared to have been converted into a morgue. And then he noticed that the bodies laid out on tables and jutting out from some of the fridges were far to small to be adults. His mouth dried.

“How many?” he asked.

“One hundred fifty-two,” Minato answered tightly, releasing him “None older than seven. But several hundred more were disposed of long ago.”

Feeling his knees become weak Hiruzen leaned onto one of the slabs, staring down at the sheet covering the small body.

“Orochimaru, what have you done?”

“Interesting that your mind immediately goes to your student.”

“I knew that he was somewhat twisted but I had hoped-“

“Orochimaru was not the one in charge,” Minato interrupted, “In fact, Orochimaru was the one who alerted us to this.”

“Then who?”

“You really cannot think of anyone else who had the ability to do this?”

Danzo probably could have, but there was no way his friend would do that. He shook his head.

Minato looked at him with disgust.

“Less than half of the children here were experimented on,” he revealed, “The rest are ROOT rejects.”

No. He wouldn’t.

Seeing his expression Minato pulled out a folder from beneath one of the slabs and slammed it down in front of Hiruzen, flipping open to a tabbed page and pointing at the text.

“Read it,” he ordered.

Hiruzen read. And as he read, the more horrified he got. Danzo had cooperated with Madara to destroy Uzushio, not just providing information but sending several ROOT teams to assassinate Loyalist families and kill survivors before they reached Konoha, before intentionally sending Namikaze Naruto into the trap that nearly killed him. The worst part was the notes written into the margins, penned in Danzo’s hand, praising his operatives.

“According to the records we’ve found,” Minato said when he noticed that Hiruzen had finished, “ROOT has been in operation since three years after you were appointed Hokage. Do you seriously expect me to believe that you had no idea what your ‘old friend’ had been up too?”

“I knew that Danzo was undertaking missions that I couldn’t do because of politics, but this? No, I didn’t know.”

Minato looked at him in contempt.

“It gets worse.”

“How?”

Minato pulled out a folder and placed it on top of the previous one.

“This contains the names of all of the shinobi that Danoz had captured _and experimented upon._ _Every_ major nation and many smaller nations are represented.”

Hiruzen felt like he might faint. Lacking a chair, he leaned heavily on the slab.

“We cannot let that information get out. If it does-“

“Too late. Due to the way I had to gather forces to take down ROOT, securing general information about what Danzo ordered done is not only unfeasible, but already too late. My office has already received pointed questions from liaisons regarding several people on this list. I will be offering them reparations, and if they demand your head… so be it.”

Minato briskly collected both folders and strode from the room as four ANBU materialized around Hiruzen.

“Sarutobi, you are under arrest for your actions, or inactions, involving ROOT,” the one with the monkey mask said, “As such you are to be confined to your family home until the investigation is complete. Hokage-sama has already agreed with the clan heads' demands that if you fail to comply he will order your death. Come with us.”

He complied.

* * *

The night of the day after ROOT fell Minato was cuddling with Kushina on the living room couch, little Naruto nursing from her breast. It had been a long day, between setting up a joint meeting of the kages two weeks from now, reviewing the information coming out of ROOT’s bases – always horrifying, reviewing Orochimaru’s interviews – only occasionally horrifying, coordinating searches for any remaining ROOT shinobi, and trying to figure out if the ROOT shinobi that they had captured could be safely rehabilitated, along with figuring out where the children they had found came from and what to do with the ones that, for various reasons, no longer had families.

The quiet of the evening was interrupted when three very large foxes summoned themselves into the room, one of which was Akane.

“Minato, these are Nitomo,” she nodded to the shorter dust colored fox, “and Kaede,” she nodded to the heavily pregnant gray-red fox, “Nitomo is one of our best healers and specializes in kit care and Kaede has agreed to nurse the kits next to her own litter, which is due next week.”

Minato sighed in relief.

“Thank you.”

“Neither of them have signed onto the fox contract,” Akane warned, “They are not obliged to listen to you.”

Minato nodded.

“Understood. Still, thank you. Kurama is still set up in the guest bedroom and I’ll have Isao-san report to you when he arrives tomorrow morning.”

“Isao-san?” Nitomo asked.

“Inuzuka Isao,” Kushina explained, “He’s the vet – the healer – who’s been caring for the kits since we, well, rescued is a good enough term I suppose. He’ll be very relieved at your presence Nitomo-san, he only has experience dealing with mundane foxes and has been tearing his hair out over things like micro-nutrients and growth rates.”

Nitomo nodded.

“I think we should see to the kits now,” she said to Akane.

“Genma’s napping next door,” Raido said from his unobtrusive place in a corner, startling the two new foxes, “If either of you need anything, just holler.”

They nodded and headed up the stairs.

A few minutes later the eldest Namikaze padded down the stairs and heavily sat in the chair opposite them.

“How are they doing?” Kushina asked.

“The kits don’t seem to have any trouble nursing at least,” Naruto answered, “And Nitomo is currently interrogating their history out of Kurama to keep him from hovering. Also, I think you expected this, but the other Chosen and Bijuu are coming.” He smiled. “It’ll be the first time the complex is full since…”

His smile fell from his face and he drooped a bit.

“What’s wrong?” Minato asked.

Naruto sighed.

“…Namikaze Minato, Uzumaki Kushina, do I have your permission to train your son as my successor?”

After a shocked moment both nodded.

“Of course,” Kushina said.

A thought occurred to Minato and he froze.

“How long do you have?”

A deathly silence filled the room.

“Best guess? A decade,” Naruto admitted, “Maybe a little more. Neural degradation. Kurama’s doing his best to fight it, but he can only delay things. The only consolation is that I’ve been assured that my cognitive functions will fail last at least.”

Kushina stood and gave the old humanoid fox a one-armed hug, the other arm still holding the infant version to her chest.

“No matter what, we be there for you to the end.”

“Thank you.”

* * *

Shisui carefully finished arming the fuuinjutsu seal that he had purchased from a Junko – one of the Uzumaki daughter clans that had survived Uzushio – that he had placed near the Namikaze complex and quietly slipped away to a rooftop with a clear line of view with trigger in hand and settled in to wait for his target.

The past several weeks had been utter chaos, ever since the UpROOTing, but things were finally starting to settle down. Currently, the biggest gossip was about the two kitsune kits that Orochimaru had either found or created – the rumor mill wasn’t sure which – which had caused him to turn on Danzo. Said kits were now supposedly being raised by Kurama and one of Minato’s foxes that had retired from active duty to start a family within the Namikaze compound. And if that wasn’t news worthy enough, a week later the other eight Bijuu and their Chosen turned up, which meant that all nine were within Konoha’s walls for the first time since the Nidaime’s reign.

However, all the rumors agreed that Kurama had adopted the pair and had become more than a little bit of a mother hen towards them. Shisui remembered from when he had read _History of the Bijuu_ that gender was basically a preferential choice for the Bijuu, and thought that Kurama might need a bit of… help… with his new ‘identity’.

Two hours later Shisui’s target finally appeared, heading out of the compound, talking to someone over his shoulder. Concentrating, he waited for the moment for Kurama to reach his trap, and triggered it. The fox vanished in a plume of smoke, reappearing with bright pink fur that sparkled in the sunlight and a bejeweled collar around his neck with a heart shaped tag that Shisui knew said “I’m a mommy now!”.

Glancing back at the entrance to the compound Shisui had to smother his laughter at the sight of Shukaku, Son Goku, and Chomei, all with clear line of sight to Kurama. Noticing the fox beginning to quite literally swell with rage Shisui began to quietly slip away, a small giggle slipping his lips.

 **“UCHIHA SHISUI!”** Kurama roared.

Shisui immediately used his best skill and shunshined away.

He was still giggling about the prank when he went to bed that night.

* * *

Shisui woke up when someone sprinkled what smelled like seasoning over him, and immediately realized that he was bound. Opening his eyes he found himself laying on what looked like a giant dinner plate while high above him, in what Shisui would later swear was his largest form, Kurama leered down at him.

The massive fox licked his lips before tying a giant cloth around his neck and picking up a _knife and fork._ Shisui’s eyes widened and he shrieked as he rolled out of the way of the descending tines. He dodged a second stab, flipped to his bound feet, and began frantically hopping away from the plate. Spotting the fork coming at him again, he yelped and started shunshining around the sealed warehouse, activating his sharingan as he did so.

 **“Hold still morsel,”** the Kyuubi growled.

“I don’t wanna be food,” Shisui wailed.

After several more minutes of Shisui dodging Kurama’s attempts to grab, stab, or bite him, the fox threw the knife at the Uchiha. Thanks to the sharingan, Shisui was able to position himself so that the knife passed just close enough to sever his bonds. Freed, he then flickered to one of the windows located high above the floor, punched it out, and shunshined all the way home, where he promptly barricaded his door and window and hid under his covers.

That morning he was woken by his mother knocking on his door.

“Shisui, do you know why Kurama-sama dropped off a note that says ‘your move’?”

Shisui whimpered.

* * *

Minato sighed as he sat opposite Orochimaru, who had been confined to his house in the wake of ROOT’s fall.

“How are you doing?”

“As well as to be expected,” Orochimaru replied, “I heard about Uchiha Shisui’s prank. It was very amusing.”

Minato chucked and the sannin lightly smiled briefly before sobering.

“The kits?”

“Are healthy and should live. They seem to be maturing more like humans than foxes, and we expect that they'll be adults in twelve to fifteen years.”

“Good, good,” the sannin said leaning back in his chair, continuing after a moment “And me?”

Minato sighed.

“While I have determined that Danzo’s threats to recruit you and keep you in line were indeed credible, and your information on his treachery and assistance in bringing down ROOT are major mitigating factors, you know that I cannot let you walk away from the atrocities you committed unpunished.”

Orochimaru nodded, unsurprised.

“Exile?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I knew the cost when I started this.”

But despite his words Orochimaru hesitated a long moment before pulling off his hitai-ate and handing it to Minato.

“How long do I have?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

He nodded.

“I’ll leave in the morning then.”

Standing he moved to leave the room to start packing.

“Orochimaru.”

He paused at the doorway.

“No bounty will be posted on you by Konoha,” Minato said, “And while you cannot return, I have no problem doing business with any agent you send. We owe you that much at least.”

After a moment Orochimaru left without saying another word.

The next morning, Orochimaru was walking down the cobbled road leading out of Konoha for the last time, his belongings in a collection of sealed scrolls in his pack. He had barely left sight of Konoha when he rounded a bend and found Matatabi waiting for him, azure and obsidian flames noiselessly flickering in non-existent wind, emerald and gold eyes fixed on him.

“Tell me Orochimaru-san, what do you know of the nekomata?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was kind of dark wasn't it? Have a prank! No, Kurama wasn't seriously trying to eat Shisui.
> 
> Yes, Orochimaru is going to resurrect the nekomata like he did the kitsune, and perhaps help create more of the latter as well.
> 
> Also, I see no reason why summons cannot summon themselves to their summoner if they so wish. It's just that if they do that they're going in blind, and no one likes to do that.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I know it'll cause confusion, young Naruto calls Old Naruto Jiji, not Hiruzen.

Minato sighed in relief as he closed the front door of the Manor behind him. Unlike now disgraced Sarutobi, who had basically lived in the Hokage’s offices to the point where his wife was a widow in all but name, Minato made certain that no matter how busy he was, how backed up the paperwork got, he always made certain to come home for dinner and leave the hat and robes firmly on the rack until he left after breakfast the next day. He had had to make a few examples of people who thought that they could treat him like his predecessor and drag him away from his family at all hours of the day to deal with problems that really could wait until the morning though.

“I’m home,” he called.

“In here,” Mito responded from the living room.

Wandering in he saw Mito sitting in a chair, a half-finished seal in front off her and fingers steepled in front of her nose as she gave him an odd look.

“Kushina and Remon are with Mikoto. Fugaku is trying to do something stupid with Itachi apparently and she needed to vent to someone.”

“So what’s with that look?”

“Have you been teaching Naruto jutsus?”

“…Not intentionally…” Minato said slowly, wondering what his five-year-old son had done, “Kushina has been teaching him some chakra exercises so he won’t have as many control issues when he succeeds Jii-chan, but no jutsus. Though if he’s like me he’s probably figured some out by observation. Which ones has he learned?” A thought occurred and he quickly added, “Please tell me it’s not S-rank.” Because that would just figure.

“It’s S-rank,” Mito confirmed.

Minato closed his eyes in dismay, only to open them again at the sound of paws drumming and scraping on the hardwood floor and three unnaturally large fox kits bounded into the room, all as big as a small working dog and only two of which had multiple tails. The kit leading the trio was the only one with a single tail, and his fur color was a suspiciously familiar sunshine yellow shade and eyes of sapphire. Flanking Naruto was Kin, whose fur was a bronze-gold color with crimson markings stretching from the corners of his eyes to the tips of his ears and black ink-brush like tail tips, and Dai, who was several centimeters taller than his brother with inverted coloring, fur a deep red with golden lines from eyes to ear tip and tails ending in a tuft of white.

“Shapeshifting is A rank,” Minato said to Mito.

“Baa-chan,” Naruto complained, voice nearly normal despite his vulpine face, “I wanted to surprise him.”

“He’s both freeform _and_ seal-less,” Mito said.

Minato looked at his son in astonishment.

“I am _very_ impressed, Naruto. How much did Kin and Dai help you?”

“Very little,” Kin grumped, “Other than help Naruto adjust to running around like us. Our chakra works too differently for hand seals to be of any use to us even if we could physically use them. Tou-chan’s trying, but accessing his chakra has never been a problem for him like it is for us.”

“That’s because I am, at the most basic level, a mass of vaguely malevolent chakra given form and sapience,” Kurama said as he walked in after his kits, “Good evening Minato.”

“Good evening. Akane hasn’t been any help?”

“She’s fairly certain that the kits can learn to use chakra the same way fox summons can, but her elders blocked her from teaching them outside of their summons realm.”

Everyone had varying degrees of an annoyed scowl at that.

“Really?” Minato asked, exasperated, “I thought kitsune were considered sacred to them?”

“We are,” Kurama confirmed as the kits bounded off, having lost interest in the conversation, “The problem isn’t teaching them, it’s teaching them _here_. The elders want the kits to be in the summons realm full time. That obviously won’t fly with me. Last I heard Akane is trying to convince them to have the kits learn during the weekdays and them spend the weekends with me. If Akane succeeds, and she was fairly certain that she would, I was planning to let Kin and Dai start when Naruto begins attending the Academy in a few months. How’s the overhaul of that going anyway?”

Minato sighed.

“On schedule. Like basically all of the other major support systems, once you scraped away the veneer it becomes obvious that Hiruzen badly neglected it during his last years, and that’s not even considering the tendrils of rot that Danzo left behind. We’re barely a third of the way through and haven’t even touched some of the more significant changes and already the pass rate has increased by twenty percent. Still, once I’m done with it Konoha will be able to say that we have the best ninja academy in the Elemental Nations.”

“Good,” Kurama nodded, “Naruto deserves the best.”

“I fully agree.”

* * *

Minato stared at the quietly irate Uchiha Clan Head and his eldest son who sat on the other side of his desk. On the desk between them was Itachi’s application to join ANBU, despite still being a chuunin due to not being old enough to apply for jounin, and Minato had just denied it after barely looking through it.

“Hokage-sama,” Fugaku ground out, “I would like to hear your reasoning for denying my son’s application.”

“ANBU would break him,” Minato said simply.

“He is more than strong enough to survive ANBU,” Fugaku retorted angrily.

“Physically yes, but Itachi is a kind and caring soul. His nature makes him a poor fit as an assassin.”

“I’ll thank you not to call my son weak.”

“Since when has kindness been weakness?”

Fugaku didn’t respond, merely glaring. Instead he pushed Itachi’s application towards Minato.

“I’m afraid that I’m going to have to insist.”

“Seriously?” Minato demanded, “Do you seriously hate your son so much that you’re willing to turn him into a broken empty-eyed walking corpse, for what? ANBU won’t give you political leverage. It won’t improve your clan’s stature. You cannot even reveal that Itachi is a member, much less what he does. So why?”

Itachi found the floor next to Minato’s desk very interesting, flushed with embarrassment and humiliation. Fukagu was red with suppressed anger, but still said nothing.

“Denied. Fugaku-san, get out of my office.”

Both Uchiha stood and started for the door.

“Itachi-san, please stay a moment.”

Both paused. Fugaku opened his mouth.

“Fugaku, _you are dismissed._ ”

“Itachi-“

Minato stood and unfurled his chakra and the two of his Guard on duty, Genma and Kakashi, stepped out of the shadows to either side of the Uchiha clan head.

“Uchiha-san,” Genma said, “The Hokage has ordered you to leave. Do we need to drag you from the building?”

Fugaku looked fit to pop a blood vessel but quietly left. Minato gestured at the chairs in front of his desk and Itachi sat back down, studying the floor between his feet. Rather than sit himself Minato walked around his desk and squatted so that the pair were at eye level.

“Itachi-kun,” Minato said gently, “Do you need to disappear?”

After a long moment Itachi spoke quietly

“This wasn’t tou-san’s idea, not really. The clan elders are pressuring him.”

“Do you know why?”

“Not really. They’ve been going on about ‘restoring the clan’ and ‘re-establishing our rightful place’ and I’ve heard more than a few mentions of an ‘Uchiha Hokage’, but I don’t understand how me being in ANBU fits in.”

“Do you need to disappear?”

After a long moment Itachi shook his head.

“If I do, they’ll just turn their attentions to Sasuke. He’s too young to resist their manipulations.”

“…I have an idea.”

* * *

Fugaku rubbed his head in frustration as he faced the Uchiha Elders, who were squabbling in outrage over Minato rejecting Itachi’s ANBU application. Mikoto was relieved, but he answered to the elders, not her.

“This is an outrage!”

“An insult, to reject our best!”

“We should use the Police to express our displeasure!”

“Perhaps,” Keizo, who Fugaku knew to be a vocal Uchiha Supremacist, said “A change of leadership is in order.”

Seeing Kiezo’s lackies nodding and no one immediately striking him down Fugaku stepped forward to speak, because if anyone heard him and took him seriously-

Three dozen ANBU dropped from the ceiling and put bare blades to all of the elder’s necks as a very familiar chakra presence abruptly made itself known directly behind him.

Shit.

“You’re in my way,” the Golden Fox said.

Fugaku didn’t quite sag with defeat as he stepped aside for Minato to take his place, all four of his Guard flanking him. The Hokage looked at all of the elders for a long moment.

“Did you take me for a fool?” he finally asked, “Or worse, Sarutobi the Complacent? Did you not think that I would take action if I caught wind of a budding coup?”

No one answered.

Minato nodded.

“Consider this your only warning. Oh, and in regards to Itachi, he has agreed to become the fifth member of my guard, but in order to ensure his safety he is moving out of the Uchiha Compound.”

Several elders tried to protest, but the ANBU holding them simply pressed their blades tighter against their throats, causing blood to dribble down their necks. Fugaku closed his eyes in pain.

“It is far too late to stop it. By now he will have finished collecting his possessions and has already left. But by all means, protest his addition to my guard.”

He turned to Fugaku.

“Make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”

The Hokage and his Guard vanished via hiraishin while the ANBU shunshined out a window one of them had opened at some point.

Once he was sure they were gone, Fugaku took a breath and began to berate the elders over their arrogance and foolishness.

It would be six months before Fugaku contacted his son, and the message consisted of a single line.

_Uchiha Keizo is at it again._

Two days later Keizo and all of his major supporters died in a house fire so hot it only left bones behind.

Officially, it was a tragic accident.

Unofficially, they had been caught plotting a coup against their clan head.

Fugaku made sure to spread the latter rumor as much as he could without being obvious, because if truth got out it would destroy his clan. If someone noticed the bottle of expensive sake that found its way to Itachi’s doorstep a day later, no one commented.

* * *

Naruto bounded across the rooftops towards the academy, quietly elated. Three days until his twelfth birthday! He could barely wait. Tou-chan and Jiji had said that they had something special planned. He hoped it was a trip to the fox summons’ realm, he wanted to see where Kin and Dai disappeared off to every week. Course if they did that they’d bring his imouto as well which… It wasn’t that he didn’t get along with his sister, more that he couldn’t understand her.

It started with the fact that she didn’t think ramen was food of the gods, which was just sacrilege, but she also didn’t particularly care for playing pranks either and would prefer to spend a day indoors reading than running around with other kids. To Naruto, it was unfathomably bizarre. Kaa-chan said pranking taught valuable trap making, stealth, avoidance, planning, and escape skills, and the running around greatly helped build muscles, all of which was needed to succeed as a shinobi. Then again, Remon had stated on multiple occasions that she didn’t want to be a shinobi, she wanted to be a scientist and builder. She wanted to create. And Naruto could admit that when she did build things, she was both creative and detailed.

Spotting his favorite sensei Naruto dismissed his thoughts of his sister and dropped down from the rooftops.

“Hi Iruka-sensei!”

“Good morning, Naruto,” Iruka said as he continued down the final stretch of street towards the academy.

“Did you qualify?”

“I did indeed. One hundred B-ranks finally completed and I passed the exam. As of next year, I will no longer be an assistant sensei, but a full sensei.”

“Great!” Naruto beamed.

He liked how Iruka didn’t try to ‘kiss his ass’ as Kaa-chan put it, much to her consternation when she realized that he had overheard and liked the phrase. It was very annoying how everyone treated him as either The Hokage’s Son or The Next Chosen No Kyuubi, and never actually saw Naruto. They were either trying to buy his favor, trying to get him to do something for them, or use him as a path to his father (that last one really annoyed Tou-chan and tended to result in nighttime ANBU intimidation visits, with Kurama sometimes joining in to amuse himself). Iruka and Dan-sensei – Tsunade’s husband – treated him like any other student from the start and judged him on his own merits, which was likely why they had been given his class in the first place. Unfortunately, they were about the only people in his class that did.

Which Naruto was forcibly reminded of when, distracted by his conversation with Iruka he opened the classroom door and walked in.

“NARUTO-KUN!”

Startled Naruto immediately cast a genjutsu smoke cloud – one of the few genjutus he could actually cast (the others being various varieties of flash-bangs and other sensory over-loaders) – but this being Naruto, who had an order of magnitude more chakra than most jounin even at twelve, the smoke cloud not only filled the classroom and hallway, but any other room with an open door, seeped through the cracks of closed doors, and poured out into the street as well.

When the smoke was quickly dispersed with several “kai”s, it revealed two very annoyed senseis… but no Naruto.

“Girls,” Dan ground out, “The hall. Now.”

Dejected, the collection of fangirls trudged out of the classroom, Dan following them out and shutting the door behind them before he began to loudly lecture them, again, on what constituted harassment. Not that this lecture would discourage them any more than the others had. Once the door was closed Iruka reached into the sleeve of his haori and drew out a little blonde fox on the border of adolescence.

“You,” he said with annoyed exasperation, “need to stop doing that.”

Naruto gave him big blue puppy eyes and wagged his tail hopefully. Iruka sighed and lightly tossed him towards the student desks.

“Just take your seat.”

Naruto reverted to human form on landing and, after looking around, slid into the seat next to Sasuke because he could hear the lecture ending and wanted to have at least one person next to him not making cow eyes at him. Sasuke gave him a look of annoyance mixed with jealousy.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Naruto muttered, “You know I’d get them to stop if I could.”

“Hn.”

The girls began to file back in, but when Ino and Sakura saw the empty seat next to Naruto they immediately began to squabble over who would have the “privilege” of sitting next to their “one true _looove_ ” (Or was it “future husband” this time?) while Naruto watched the pair like they were an exploding tag that had begun to hiss. Utilizing their distraction fighting each other, as well as Dan pulling the pair apart and berating them, Shikamaru slipped into the seat next to Naruto, having relocated from his seat in the back corner of the room.

“Thank you,” Naruto breathed in relief.

“Troublesome blondes,” Shikamaru muttered, putting his head on the desk and seemingly taking a nap.

As Ino and Sakura slunk to their seats, having been denied the opportunity to sit next to Naruto, Iruka finished passing out the graded quizzes from yesterday. Naruto nodded at the expected eight out of ten on his. Book-work was very much not his strongest aspect, he was a kinesthetic learner. Give him a jutsu, a demonstration, a description on how it worked, and a place for him to do a mass shadow clone – which Jiji had taught him on his tenth birthday, to everyone’s annoyance as they had been tripping over his clones for a week afterward – and he could become proficient in near record time, much to the delight of Genma, Raido, and Kakashi, who were competing to see who could teach him the most, and most powerful, jutsus, to Tou-chan’s dismay.

“Ok class,” Dan said, as he quickly began to sketch a map on the chalkboard, “Today we’re going to be doing a mock mission.”

Naruto quietly cheered, along with half the class.

He quite enjoyed the academy.

* * *

Minato was eating dinner with his family and listening to Naruto babble about the mock missing Dan had conducted that day when he felt a hiraishin beacon flare to life in the Namikaze compound.

“Jii-chan just activated a beacon,” He interrupted, standing, “I need to go.”

He barely waited for Genma, who was on duty at the time, to grab onto his shoulder before teleporting. Looking around the elder Naruto’s workshop he spotted the fox-human lying on the floor, half curled and clutching his chest.

“Jii-chan?”

“Get Tsunade,” Naruto gasped,

“My heart just stopped.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Naruto has a sister, did you honestly think that Minato and Kushina would have stopped at one kid had they lived? That said, Remon has absolutely no interest in being a ninja and thus has no effect on the plot. The two are also so different that they are not particularly close, though Naruto would still come to Remon's aid in a heartbeat.
> 
> No, Itachi was not involved in putting down the coup. He offered, as did Shisui, but Minato flatly refused to pit Uchiha against Uchiha. All of the ANBU involved were either clanless or from different clans.
> 
> Yes, Kushina came up with that to retroactively justify teaching Naruto pranking.
> 
> I've always been of the opinion that Naruto is not an idiot, but in cannon he's worn the mask of one for so long and from such an early age that, combined with his education being constantly sabotaged, he became the mask. Here, he has a family and support structure that is actively encouraging him to be his best.
> 
> Almost done, just one chapter left. What do you think, should I do the sequel or the cannon crossover next? Of the latter, I've got two versions bouncing around in my head, one where both Naruto and Kurama swap places with their cannon counterparts, and will go AU very quickly, and one where only Kurama does.


	16. Chapter 16

Naruto lay on a quickly cleared and sterilized table in his workshop, Kurama sitting next to his head as Tsunade worked directly on his heart. He watched as she carefully finished the final lines of the fuuinjutsu pacemaker seal on Naruto’s heart while he stimulated the vital organ with his chakra to keep it beating in the absence of signals from Naruto’s brain, quietly relieved that one of the first things Tsunade had done was render Naruto unconscious. Releasing a heavy breath Tsunade drew the brush out of Naruto’s chest cavity and then carefully touched a finger to the seal and connected it to Naruto’s chakra system. Chakra poured into the seal and Naruto’s heart managed a single beat on its own before the seal overloaded and detonated. Tsunade flinched back with a curse and Kurama grimaced as he reformed Naruto’s heart. And once again forced it to beat.

“I was afraid of that,” Tsunade sighed, “Between your chakra and Naruto’s there was far too much flowing though his system even in a resting state.”

“Then use a stronger one,” Kurama demanded.

“More chakra throughput means more force exerted on the heart, and that one was already dangerously strong. Anything stronger would cause his heart to shred itself with each beat.”

“I can fix his heart, do it.”

“You do realize that doing so would force Naruto to spend the rest of his life in agony, right?”

“I…” Kurama hesitated, “You can disable his pain, right?”

“Nothing that your regen wouldn’t undo within moments. I do have one last option, but I don’t think the corrosive nature of your chakra will play nicely with an implant.”

She still picked up a small black box with a pair of thin cables coming out of it. Instead of starting to implant them however she carefully placed one of the cables against Naruto’s heart, submerging it into the layer of Kurama’s chakra around it that he used to keep it beating. There was a quiet sizzle and a whiff of smoke and Tsunade drew the cable back to reveal the coating to be heavily eaten away and the thin copper wires thoroughly corroded.

The best medic nin in the Elemental Nations sagged slightly and returned the box and cables to the table before replacing Naruto’s sternum and dismissed the jutsu that held his regen at bay, which had only held so long because Kurama had been actively trying to avoid breaking it, allowing Naruto’s chest to seal back up.

“That’s it?” Kurama demanded, “You’re giving up?”

“The problem is his brain,” Tsunade said, voice laced with defeat, “Not his heart. Not the nerves leading to it. Not his spine. His brain. And I can’t fix that. I’m sorry.”

Kurama gazed at Naruto’s sleeping face, refusing to look as she sighed and left. A minute later he felt Minato enter the room.

“Hey,” he said quietly, “Why don’t we move Jii-chan to his bed? He’d be more comfortable there.”

Kurama hesitated for a long moment before he nodded. Minato carefully lifted Naruto into a bridal carry and left the room, Kurama padding along behind him as they crossed the courtyard. Kin and Dai pressed themselves against him as he walked, saying nothing, but offering wordless reassurance of their presence.

Minato gently placed Naruto on his bed and Kurama hopped up to curl up just over his right shoulder, nose pointing towards his oldest friend, Kin and Dai pressing themselves against Naruto elsewhere. He barely glanced at the others in the room, Minato, Kushina, Akane, Mini-Naruto, Remon, Tsunade, and Mito.

“How long can you keep his heart beating?” Kushina asked.

“Indefinitely,” he growled.

“Even when you sleep?”

“As a Bijuu, I don’t need sleep.”

“But you still experience mental fatigue,” Mito pointed out.

“I won’t let Naruto die,” Kurama snarled.

“I’ve been dying for years, old friend.”

Between remembering to keep his heart beating and the conversation Kurama had somehow missed Naruto waking.

“Don’t talk like that,” Kurama hissed.

Naruto tilted his head so that they could look each other in the eyes.

“There isn’t a cure, Kurama,” he said sadly.

“There has to be!”

“Kurama,” Naruto waited until he had the fox’s attention, “Keeping my heart beating won’t stop the degeneration, even if you managed to keep it going in your sleep. I don’t want your last memories of me to be an empty-eyed corpse that you make draw breath. It’s time to let me go.”

The only reason Kurama wasn’t crying was because he physically couldn’t. He keened, and buried his nose into the crook of Naruto’s neck even as he curled his true self tighter around Naruto’s soul, ignoring how the once bright blue spark was now flickering.

“Mito,” Naruto said, “The large scroll in the corner contains the latest Chosen seal. Could you…”

“I have it. You want to do this now?”

“No,” Kurama snapped just as Naruto said “Yes.”

“Naruto-“

“Kurama.”

Naruto lifted an arm and began to gently rub Kurama’s head between his ears. The once human smiled.

“We had a good run. But we’ve reached the end.”

“I…”

Naruto bared his soul, letting Kurama feel his pain and exhaustion, but also peace. His acceptance of his death. Naruto rubbed his thumb across Kurama’s cheek.

“This isn’t the end for me.”

“But I can’t ever go to the Pure Lands.”

“Then perhaps one day I’ll visit you. But it’s time for me to leave.”

Kurama keened.

* * *

It took three hours for three seal masters – Tou-chan, Kaa-chan, and Mito-baa-chan – to paint the Chosen seal onto Naruto, Kurama never looking away from Jiji the whole time. When they finished, he stepped up to the pile of fur that was Jiji and three kitsune, trying to keep his tears at bay.

“It’s time?” Jiji asked.

“I’m ready,” Naruto said.

“I’m-“ Kurama flinched as Jiji’s seal abruptly flared into existence and turned to look at him.

“It’s time for your half of the key,” Jiji said kindly.

“I…” Kurama sagged, “I won’t forget you, Naruto.”

Jiji smiled.

“I know. Make me proud, both of you.”

“We will,” Naruto promised.

Kurama keened again and dispersed his avatar. A few seconds later most of Jiji’s seal deactivated, save for a small section over his stomach. They grabbed forearms and the transfer began.

Naruto gritted his teeth in pain as he felt Kurama reluctantly slide into his seal, Bijuu chakra searing as it began to flow through his chakra network. Finally, Kurama’s mind and the last of his chakra slid into him and Naruto felt-heard the seal fully activate. He opened his eyes – when had he closed them? – and found himself looking into Jiji’s sapphire orbs.

“Take care of him, Naruto.”

“I promise. To the end.”

Jiji smiled. A long moment later his head lolled to the side and his hand went slack.

Kurama’s grief overwhelmed Naruto.

At the age of two-hundred-fifteen, Namikaze Naruto died.

* * *

The funeral took place two weeks later.

Namikaze Naruto’s casket, carried by the six elder Chosen and escorted by their Bijuu, began the procession from the Namikaze Compound to a location two kilometers outside Konoha.

Following directly behind the casket was the newest Chosen, tears flowing down his cheeks as he cradled Kurama to his chest, the latter’s eyes never leaving the casket and flanked by Gaara of Suna, Chosen of Shukaku, and Fuu of Taki, Chosen of Chomei. Behind them came the four Kage, all in their formal clothes, then the Daimyos of the four great nations and the heads of Konoha’s vassals. Behind them was Mito, Kushina, and the Uzushio Survivors, followed by a who’s who of Clan Heads and nobility. The entire path, from start to finish, was lined by thousands of people, shinobi and civilians alike, all joined to pay their final respects to the one who was already being called the greatest and most influential man to have lived since Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo. It took three hours for the procession to reach their destination.

A circle of nine mausoleums, each with a statue of one of the Bijuu in front of the entrance, which was located on the inside of the ring, all crafted from obsidian created by jutsus. A small stream ran through the middle of the circle and massive ancient redwoods surrounded it on all sides, shading it.

The Tomb of the Chosen.

Naruto was the last of the first generation of Chosen to be interred here, with the exception of Sanehiko, who had not left behind a corpse but did have a memorial in Son Goku’s wing.

Upon arrival the Chosen took the casket into the catacomb beneath Kurama’s mausoleum and placed it onto the obsidian slab directly in front of the stairs. Stepping back several master chakra craftsmen came forward and, with a series of hand seals, stone flowed up and over Naruto’s remains, completely encasing them, and finishing with a life-sized statue of him in red granite sitting in a meditative pose, with a pair of sapphires for eyes set into his vulpine face, which had a small smile on it.

Upon the tomb was the words

_Namikaze Naruto_

_Savior of the Bijuu, The First Chosen, Kyuubi no Chosen_

_“Sometimes all it takes to save someone from being a monster is a hand offered in kindness.”_

* * *

Worldbuilding details that I wasn’t able to write into the story (will probably add more over time):

Mutagenic Limiters:

Prevents the chosen from mutating into an anthropomorphic cross with their Bijuu. Here's why some would want to disable them: Pros: Improved regen, Increased max chakra throughput, immunity to the harmful effects of Bijuu chakra, greatly extended lifespan. Cons: inhuman appearance, eventual effective infertility (no longer compatible with baseline humans), greatly extended lifespan.

Non-combat ninjutsu:

Pioneered by Konoha first for their shinobi retirement program and latter due to having far more ninja than available missions. Has resulted in worldwide revolutions in most fields. Common example: stone is rapidly becoming the most common building material due to it being easily manipulatable by earth jutsus and wood only being manipulatable via mokuton.

Map:

 <https://www.deviantart.com/mcskeleton/art/Naruto-World-Map-532687636>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I sat down to write this, I admit that I'd thought it'd be longer. Still, OTL Naruto's story is done. It's time for this timeline's Naruto to step up.
> 
> Judging from the responses, I'll be doing the sequel before the AU->Cannon crossover.


End file.
